Jerusalem Notebook

Nov 25, 2015 | Jerusalem Notebook, Jews and the Jewish State

Nearly a decade ago, my first Thanksgiving in Israel was a strange and a most unholiday-ish experience. After a lifetime of festive dinners with family and friends, I found myself in Jerusalem’s Old City, speaking to a small gathering of maybe 20 people about a rather grim subject: the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries. There weren’t any Americans in the crowd, which was made up mostly of German Christians.

After the fact, it occurred to me that not one of us had even thought to give thanks for our own safety and for the freedom to discuss the matter without fear.

As I walked home, I passed a brightly lit restaurant (which no longer exists) on Emek Refaim. It was noisy and packed with people. And I immediately noticed that the waiters and waitresses were wearing rather odd-looking costumes, apparently meant to represent Pilgrims and Indians (this was my conclusion after studying an array of Pocahontas-inspired paper headbands with a single feather thrust into the back).

It occurred to me that I hadn’t yet eaten, and that the eatery was sure to be serving turkey, dressing and pumpkin pie. But for some reason, I wasn’t in the mood. Instead, I made my way home and ate some leftover ravioli.

That rather solitary evening got me thinking about the holiday itself and its seeming disappearance from Jerusalem.

I asked my neighbor, Joe Straus, why Jerusalem’s Jews don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. “We do!” he said, with a smile. “Every Shabbat is a day of thanksgiving.”

Fair enough. For sure, there is a lot to be thankful for at Shabbat dinners – that is indisputable.

In any case, I later learned, as you’ll see below, that I was wrong about the lack of Thanksgiving dinners in Israel. I just hadn’t been in the right place at the right time.

Meanwhile, Joe’s remark stirred my curiosity. It didn’t take me long to realize that gratitude lies at the heart of nearly every Jewish prayer. Last week, I finally asked a rabbi about both Thanksgiving and the giving of thanks.

David Sterne describes himself as a Chasidic rabbi “living and enlivening in Jerusalem’s Old City.” I met him a few years ago and knew that he would have some insights into Thanksgiving in Judaism.

“As an American Jew,” he told me, “I have fond memories of Thanksgiving meals with the family, enjoying some turkey with all the trappings, cranberry sauce and especially pumpkin pie for dessert.

“Here in Israel, those memories serve me well, as I create a Thanksgiving Shabbat for friends and new immigrants, inviting guests over to enjoy the same cuisine (I make the pumpkin pie myself). Frequently, I am asked what this secular American holiday has to do with Judaism. Well, it has nothing to do with Judaism, and yet it has everything to do with Judaism.”

Of course I had to ask, “What do you mean it has both nothing and everything to do with Judaism?”

“Nothing” – because Thanksgiving was conceived and established by Christians who found themselves in a new and strange land (the east coast of what was later to become the U.S.) – with no association with either Jews or Judaism.

And yet “everything,” because those same Christians were devout pilgrims who had endured a difficult year and wanted to thank the One above for getting through that year (with a “little help” from some native American friends). And there is nothing more Jewish than giving thanks and acknowledging God.

These days, most Christians are not only aware of, but also intrigued by, the Hebraic roots of our faith. Meanwhile, we have been taught – for as long as most of us can remember – to give thanks for all things, even the things that seem less than welcome.

Still, I was particularly surprised by an English version of the Kaddish – the Jewish mourners’ prayer – which is not a lament at all (as I expected), but rather an offering of praise to God, even in the midst of great sorrow:

Exalted and hallowed be His great Name.
Throughout the world which He has created according to His Will.
May He establish His kingship, bring forth His redemption and hasten the coming of His Moshiach (Messiah).
In your lifetime and in your days and in the lifetime of the entire House of Israel, speedily and soon, and say, Amen.
May His great Name be blessed forever and to all eternity. Blessed and praised, glorified, exalted and extolled, honored, adored and lauded be the Name of the Holy One, blessed be He.
Beyond all the blessings, hymns, praises and consolations that are uttered in the world, Amen.
May there be abundant peace from heaven, and a good life for us and for all Israel; and say, Amen.
He Who makes peace in His heavens, may He make peace for us and for all Israel; and say, Amen.

Rabbi Sterne provided me with some further insight into the praise and worship that is so prevalent in Jewish prayer. “In fact, he told me, “the Hebrew word for ‘Jew’ – Yehudi – means ‘one who acknowledges.’ The etymological root of the word – hoda’ah – means ‘admission; acknowledgment.’”

He went on to explain,

There is nothing more basic, and yet profound, as acknowledging the One above, fully, face-to-face with the admission that we are “nothing,” no more than a speck in the cosmos. Yet we are “everything” for the precise reason that He smacked us right down here in the middle of this incredible universe – undoubtedly for the purpose of doing something unique.

Some of us manage to discover what that purpose is. Others don’t. But we can all give thanks to Him for putting us here, and acknowledge that we have a task.

The first thing that a Jew does in the morning, even before getting out of bed, is say, “Modeh ani lefanecha” – “I acknowledge your presence.” He then begins his prayers in the morning with the words “Hodu Lashem” – “Give thanks and acknowledge the Lord.” And finally the very pinnacle of prayers occurs when we say “Modim anachanu lach” – “We thank/acknowledge You.”

There are different levels and nuances of this gratitude and acknowledgment, but that is what Jews are all about: hoda’ah, Thanks-giving.

In fact, even the Hebrew word for turkey is hodu!

This year, once again, I’ll be in Jerusalem while my family abroad feasts on turkey, dressing, potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and all the other trimmings – delicacies that reappear without fail on groaning tables all across the United States.

And in spirit, I’ll be right there with them. But I’ll also join my Jewish friends and neighbors here in Jerusalem, giving thanks, lifting a glass and being grateful for all the blessings we receive during our lifetime on earth.

As the Israeli toast says, “L’Chaim!” – “To life!”

Thank God for the gift of life He’s given to each of us.

Dec 24, 2015 | Jerusalem Notebook, Muslims and Muslim Majority States

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
Luke 2:8-14 NIV

The inspiring words of the Luke the Evangelist are woven into the colorful Christmas tapestry that envelops us this time of year. And the wonderfully evocative word “peace” – such an integral part of the angelic declaration – is a common parlance in today’s world.

In Peter’s first letter to young, first-century churches, he quoted from Psalm 34,

Whoever would love life
and see good days
must keep their tongue from evil
and their lips from deceitful speech.
They must turn from evil and do good;
they must seek peace and pursue it.
(1 Peter 3:10-11)

With Christmas in the air, and hymns and carols declaring the arrival of the Prince of Peace, we are even more attuned to the word – but what does peace really mean? And how are we supposed to seek it?

As violence screams from international headlines and blood surges and pools across the face of the earth, the word peace often seems to be used almost promiscuously. We hear it frequently in phrases such as, “Peace envoy,” “Peace talks” and “Middle East Peace Process.”

Those of us who have seen several decades pass have been hearing about peace for as long as we can remember. The word emerged from the smoldering warzones of Vietnam, resounding in protest folk songs, in campus anti-war chants, and in the familiar “peace sign,” which appeared on T-shirts as a tie-dyed illustration of youthful hope.

Fast-forward some 40 years and we now hear the same outcry from the Middle East – and particularly from those who support “peace talks” to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Peace is a noble cause. It is a beautiful, if elusive, goal. And, in fact the Hebrew word Shalom – which both welcomes and bids farewell to guests – offers a deep blessing, evoking a state of completion and even of earthly perfection.

Today, however, the word shalom is often applied to redundant conferences and diplomatic dialogues; to a quest for compromise that will supposedly end tensions. A so-called cycle of violence is invariably introduced, to project moral equivalency onto both sides of the conflict.

Of course, the Biblical vision of hammering swords into plows, abandoning warfare and “pursuing peace” should never be taken lightly. But anyone who has lived in Israel for a prolonged period clearly recognizes that no one desires peace more than the Israelis.

Unfortunately, since the founding of the Jewish State in 1948, at least three generous peace offers from Israel have been turned down flatly by either Yasser Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas. CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy for Middle East Reporting in America) reported,

In 2008, after extensive talks, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and presented a comprehensive peace plan. Olmert’s plan would have annexed the major Israeli settlements to Israel and in return given equivalent Israeli territory to the Palestinians, and would have divided Jerusalem.

In the summer of 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton hosted intense peace talks at Camp David between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli leader Ehud Barak, culminating in a comprehensive peace plan known as the Clinton Parameters, which was similar to the later Olmert Plan, though not quite as extensive.

The 1978 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt … provided for Palestinian autonomy in the territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat begged the PLO and Arafat to accept what he had negotiated with Israel, and to engage in talks with Israel. President [Jimmy] Carter also called on moderate Palestinians to come forward and join the Cairo conference. Unfortunately, Arafat refused and did everything he could to undermine Sadat and the Camp David Accords, with PLO gunmen even murdering West Bank Palestinians who supported Sadat’s approach.

Recent Middle East history affirms that achieving peace is more easily said than done. In fact, an interesting biblical statement seems to foresee this awkward use of language.

In Jeremiah 6:14, in reference to Israel, the prophet relates that others have prophesied falsely, then goes on to say, “They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.”

One of the most well-known “peace” groups in Israel is called Shalom Achshav – meaning, in English, “Peace Now.” The word “achshav,” or “now,” implies impatience, seemingly offering a quick reconciliation, and is usually based on offering land for peace.

It is curious that such notions still survive after Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. This unilateral decision by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has provided a foolproof laboratory analysis of how unrealistic such peacemaking ideas really are.

The vacuum left by Israel’s disengagement from Gaza – the removal of some 8,000 Jews from their beautifully tended settlements, synagogues, schools and gardens – brought forth a tsunami of Hamas terrorists, who have continued to launch missiles at Israel ever since.

As if that weren’t enough, similar arsenals have also appeared in the Sinai Peninsula after Israel’s departure in 1982, and in Southern Lebanon after leaving in 2000.

The Gaza disengagement and those before it “healed the daughter of God’s people slightly” with its hopes for peace, but did not provide true peace. Why?

For one thing, the religious and nationalist negotiators for Palestine have made it clear that they do not genuinely want to resolve the situation. This is true for a number of reasons, including financial ones. As author Edwin Black has said in his book Financing the Flames, “Peace is not profitable for the Palestinians.”

By this, Black simply means that a continuous influx of massive international funding lines the pockets of Palestinian leaders (never reaching ordinary Arab citizens) and is also doled out in the form of salaries to imprisoned terrorists and the surviving families of murderers.

Another reason involves radical Islamist claims to the land itself. Because all of Israel was once under the authority of Muslim rule (most recently that of the Ottoman Empire), according to strict interpretations of Islamic Sharia Law, it cannot return to the hands of infidels – in this case, specifically Jews.

As we close our eyes, envisioning a star-lit Bethlehem manger, a royal visitation of Eastern kings bearing elegant gifts, and a dangerous flight to Egypt to shield the infant Jesus from genocide, we have to ask ourselves what “Peace on Earth, good will to men” actually means. How are we supposed to “seek peace and pursue it” in today’s war-torn world?

There are three thought-provoking ideas in the angelic declaration to Bethlehem’s shepherds – which, through the words of Scripture, are a declaration to us as well.

First of all, we are instructed not to fear. Those simple guardians of their flocks were terrified by the supernatural radiance that surrounded them, eclipsing their familiar pastures. Yet the first thing they were told was to rejoice and not to be afraid, even though they were in clearly unexplainable circumstances.

So we find ourselves today in unusual times, facing unfamiliar scenarios and unpredictable dangers. Yet the Bible’s message to us is repeated again and again, and remains the same today: Fear not! I am with you always.

Second, the shepherds were given the somewhat contradictory message that the Jewish Messiah had been born, but that he was swaddled in pieces of cloth and lying in a manger! What a mystifying revelation – perhaps more puzzling to those who heard it later than to the dazzled shepherds themselves.

The promised Messiah was to bring God’s rule and reign to earth, and to rescue the Jewish people from their unjust treatment. Christians believe that Messiah has indeed come in his first advent. But we also anticipate a second advent. According to an ancient creed, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.”

When? Then, as now, the timing of that glorious Messianic reign remains uncertain. But the promise is undeniable. And, as with most God-related matters, faith has to precede sight.

Finally, we have the familiar phrase, “Peace on earth, good will to men,” which is so beloved in Christmas lyrics.

More complex wording appears in the New International Bible: “and on earth peace to those on whom His favor rests.” Or, as the Amplified Bible says, “And on earth peace among men with whom He is well-pleased.”

How can we possibly gain the favor of God, or please him? If we seek him with all our hearts, we will surely find him. And from the beginning to the end of the Bible, we learn that he is pleased and honored by our faith in him and by our obedience to his Word.

Can we bring peace to the Middle East? As individuals, probably not. But we can each play a part in changing minds and hearts by being informed about the facts and by speaking the truth. Some of us can serve as warriors; others can battle with words, informing those who are misled or otherwise deluded.

We can all watch and pray; trust and obey.

But for now, we can and should recall some wonderful old words:

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!

Jan 13, 2016 | Christians and Minority Rights, Jerusalem Notebook, Muslims and Muslim Majority States

I was fortunate to meet Charmaine Hedding, a young South African Christian, during my first year in Jerusalem. Before long, we discovered that we were kindred spirits and became good friends. Our concerns regarding the attacks on Israel, as well as about Islamic persecution of Christians, have provided us with much common ground for more than a decade since.

Not long after I met her, Charmaine spent several years working to repatriate (mostly South) Sudanese to their African homeland. Some of them had initially entered Israel illegally and could not stay in the country.

Hedding and others – with Israel’s blessings – devised a plan through which these Africans would not only return to South Sudan, but would receive from Israel new skills and knowhow to help rebuild their devastated homeland.

Good friends, common ground.

Since those days, apart from our interest in Israel, both Charmaine and I have turned our attention toward the ever-increasing plight of Christian refugees in the Middle East. She has founded a humanitarian aid group called the Shai Fund and makes frequent trips to visit Christian refugees in order to discern their specific needs and provide them with basic necessities.

I, too, have visited the refugees. I went to Erbil, Kurdistan to interview some of those who had fled the onslaught of Islamic State terrorists in 2014. Tragically, some of them had run for their lives more than once, finding temporary shelter in the relatively safe Kurdish region of northern Iraq. But they had lost everything in the process.

As I wrote elsewhere,

Young Christian men who resisted Islamic State’s edict of “convert, pay jizya tax or leave” were shot. The elderly and newborns did not fare well on the long, hot trek, since most of those who fled weren’t even allowed to carry food or water with them. The survivors eventually limped into Erbil, the Kurdistan region’s capital city.

Even today, they have little more than the clothes in which they fled, with nothing remaining of a lifetime’s toil.

And not only have they lost many loved ones, but in a sense, they’ve lost some part of themselves. They are no longer teachers, shop owners, farmers, bankers or businessmen. They’ve forfeited all control over their lives, and have to rely on strangers whom they barely trust.

I have never encountered such utterly dispossessed people before – except for the Israelis I’ve interviewed over the years who were among some 850,000 Jews driven out of their ancient homelands in the mid-20th century. I recounted a number of their stories in my book “Saturday People, Sunday People.”

More recently, thousands of Iraqi and Syrian believers – most of them Assyrian Christians – have been expelled from their ancestral homes and subjected to unthinkable violence and abuse. In fact, my book’s title reflects a jihadi slogan: “On Saturday we kill the Jews; on Sunday we kill the Christians.”

Today there are fewer than 10 Jews left in Iraq. And now the Christian community is precipitously shrinking, as well. Along with a number of other groups, Shai Fund continues to assist the displaced Christians in Kurdistan, most of whom have nowhere to go.

But this Christmas, Hedding and her Shai Fund team visited a different locale. They found an opportunity to help provide for Christians who have made their way out of Iraq in the hope of finding a better future in neighboring Turkey.

I knew Charmaine had cut short her own family Christmas festivities to visit small enclaves of Christians scattered across Turkey. So I asked what she had learned during her recent trip.

What she and her team discovered reflects that some Muslim communities will open their lands and villages to fleeing Christians. The Turkish government and state, though Muslim, has most certainly given a place of refuge and protection to the Christians refugees. Though many of the Christians now settling in small villages in Turkey are greeted with some suspicion by the locals, government authorities are allowing them to enter Turkey and apply for refugee status.

During the Christmas season, Shai Fund visited 10 remote villages where Christian refugee communities have been forced to live. These towns do not have churches or local Christian populations, so Hedding and her team traveled with two priests from Istanbul, hoping to allow the refugees enjoy a more traditional celebration of the birth of Jesus.

“All of our Christmas services were held in wedding halls,” Charmaine told me.

She then explained that the UNHCR informs these Christians that they have permission to only live in far-flung Turkish villages where they are unable to work and provide income for themselves and their families. They have to wait for UNHCR interviews in these cities for years – some as long as until 2022. Only then will they be allowed to resettle.

Although their children are permitted to attend Turkish schools, many parents prefer that their children be taught in classrooms that make a point of keeping the children’s Christianity intact. Otherwise, they try to find a way for them to be tutored privately.

Hedding described their Christmas outreach:

We started in a town near the Black Sea, where we helped 26 families from Iraq. We visited a home where three families are living together in one apartment.

Originally from Mosul and Qaraqosh, when ISIS invaded their village, these Christians fled to Erbil. However they found no place to live there – no food and no opportunities. They came to see that, as Iraqi Christians, they no longer have a future.

So they made the painful decision to leave Iraq forever. They escaped to Turkey in the hope of eventually reaching Europe or North America.

And now, without food or any income, these believers are desperate to leave Turkey. They are longing for a country that will provide them with the right to work, to send their children to safe schools, and to be free to practice their faith.

So besides assisting with their Christmas services, we also gave out food cards loaded with Turkish lira at each location so that they can buy food.

In the next two villages they visited, the Shai Fund team assisted another 251 families.

In this region, the Christians had to wait not only for permission from local authorities to celebrate Christmas, but also for a priest to travel some eight hours to visit the villages.

Christian

“Outside the halls, there was security to protect the Christians from attacks by radical elements,” Charmaine explained to me.

“The families were warned not to linger outside the wedding halls after the service for fear they would be identified. A woman told me that she and others are afraid to wear a cross on a chain, for fear it will identify them and place them at risk.”

One of the halls refused to allow the celebrants to use microphones or loudspeakers, despite the fact that there were 800 people gathered in the hall. The local residents didn’t want anyone to know that Christians were holding a religious service for fear of reprisals or the vandalizing of their property, or both.

It is difficult to imagine living in such circumstances. Charmaine went on to explain,

The priest arrived with a suitcase holding the wafers and the wine for the Eucharist. The music was pre-recorded. And I had a sense of sorrow, because I know that some of the lost churches in the Nineveh Plain were not only beautiful buildings, but were known for their wonderful music.

Church choirs that once led congregations in singing and chanting their prayers are now scattered across the globe. One family tells me that some of their relatives are still in Turkey, one is in Germany, others are in Australia and two girls are still in Erbil, Kurdistan.

After the service, when they talk to me about their lives, sorrow is reflected in the eyes of the men, while the women weep quietly. During one conversation, an older woman quietly walked away, into the kitchen. I found her there, her face hidden between her shaking hands as she wept bitterly.

Yet, despite the pain and the fear, I couldn’t help but notice that their home has a small nativity set, openly celebrating the birth of their Savior.

Despite the danger, at each location the halls were packed to capacity as Christmas hymns and carols were sung in Aramaic and Arabic. And after the Christmas services, a number of babies were baptized, their names recorded in the church rolls.

“Providing help to these believers both physically and spiritually at Christmastime clearly strengthened their hope with faith,” Hedding concluded.

“And sadly, hope and faith are all they have left.”

Feb 3, 2016 | Christians and Minority Rights, Muslims and Muslim Majority States

Most of us who follow the news have seen the heart-rending photos of weary parents holding beautiful, brown-eyed babies, making their way to Europe in search of a better life. We’ve seen barbed-wire borders, evacuees fleeing across deserts and the tragedy of capsized boats and lost children. We’ve also watched the behavior of newly arrived young Muslim males toward women, particularly in Cologne, Germany on New Year’s Eve.

The word “refugee” is on many people’s lips as a virtual tsunami of Middle Easterners and Africans floods Europe, setting in motion a seemingly never-ending drama.

Winter weather has slowed the pace of perilous sea crossings between Turkey and the Greek islands. But the political storms directed at Europe’s leadership – and outrageous behavior on the part some of the migrants – seem to be intensifying.

Germany’s beleaguered chancellor, Angela Merkel, initially adopted an open-arms policy toward migrants (leading to burgeoning numbers of arrivals into Europe) alongside raging debates about the wisdom of her decision.

On Jan. 30, Merkel announced rather belatedly that many of the refugees will be expected to leave Europe and return to their homes once the Syrian civil war has ended.

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel Saturday said she expects many refugees to leave Europe’s largest economy once the war in Syria is over, addressing public concerns the country won’t be able to cope with the continued influx of immigrants.

“We expect that once peace is restored in Syria” and once terror organization ISIS is curtailed, many refugees will return back home, Ms. Merkel told members of her conservative Christian Democratic Party at a gathering broadcast on German television.

Some laughed at Merkel’s optimistic declaration. But the desperation of many refugees is not in question. The war-torn Middle East – Syria and Iraq, along with Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan – is roiling with the displacement of millions. Some have fled Syria’s war, while others have run for their lives from the Islamic State. Many have languished in miserable refugee centers and squalid displacement camps for years.

The refugees’ fragile hopes of returning to their homes have been shattered, much like the houses and villages they once populated.

However, along with the genuinely displaced and dispossessed Syrians, Iraqis and even Iranians, thousands of economic migrants have also joined the parade, traveling from North and Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond to seek a new beginning in prosperous Europe’s welcoming embrace.

Meanwhile, there are repeated warnings, not only from security forces and police, but also from some of the refugees themselves (see below) that ISIS has quietly infiltrated the tide of evacuees.

After visiting some displaced Christians in Kurdistan a little more than a year ago, I had another recent opportunity, as I traveled back to Jerusalem from the United States, to listen to some other concerned voices. They told me not only about the ongoing refugee drama, but also about the Islamist ideology that overshadows it.

The first person I met with was Baroness Cox, former deputy speaker of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom and an indefatigable warrior for human rights in the world. I had the honor of writing a biography of Lady Cox a few years ago, Baroness Cox: Eyewitness to a Broken World. We shared a lovely mid-January dinner in London.

Refugee
Lela Gilbert and Baroness Cox

I wanted to hear from the baroness about the “private members’ bill” she has recently introduced to the House of Lords. She has done so, working with British Muslim women’s organizations, in hopes of addressing some of the dangers and struggles they face.

I asked her why she is concerned about the practice of Sharia (Islamist) law in Britain. Does it really cause suffering to Muslim women? Here’s what she told me:

As a result of the rulings of Sharia Councils/Courts operating in this country, which not only discriminate systematically against women in ways which would make our suffragettes turn in their graves, they also represent a threat to the fundamental principle in our democracy of “One Law for All.”

Essential tenets of Sharia Law include many forms of systematic gender discrimination against women such as:

– Asymmetrical access to divorce: A man can divorce his wife merely by saying, “I divorce you” three times. The woman has to pay and also often to fulfill other requirements, which may be difficult or impossible for her.

– Polygamy: Under Sharia Law, a man may have four wives; some Muslim women in this country say they often have no choice. Sometimes they are married into a polygamous marriage without even realizing it is polygamy.

– Inheritance provisions: Under Sharia Law, a girl or woman characteristically receives half the amount of legacy left to a man or boy.

– Unequal respect and weight of evidence: In a Sharia Law context, a woman’s evidence is deemed to be half the value of a man’s, and therefore two women may be required to testify compared to one man.

Sharia Law also legitimizes physical “chastisement,” thereby allowing some forms of domestic violence.

I also asked the baroness whether the massive number of refugees flooding Europe and the ongoing reports of sexual abuse by male immigrants might awaken the West to the issues about Sharia law that she is addressing.

“This is a complex, confused and confusing issue,” she told me. “The UK has an honorable record of providing refuge to genuine refugees, which would include, for example, some of the Christians and Yazidis fleeing from ISIS terrorism in the Middle East. However, there is a real fear that many of those seeking to come to the UK are not genuine refugees and may include member of ISIS or activists with some related Islamist agenda.”

After hearing these troubling words from Baroness Cox, I flew to Munich, Germany the following day. There I found people who have lived under the shadow of the Islamism Lady Cox described, and have suffered in greatly because of its brutality.

Binan is a soft-spoken Yazidi woman who arrived in Munich before the notorious 2014 ISIS assault on her people. Today she is working with admirable tenacity and humility to help her co-religionists. She has lost many friends and most of her extended family to the murderous violence.

Even before ISIS emerged in a blaze of horror, in her Iraqi village (in Nineveh), Binan saw friends and acquaintances gunned down by radicals for such crimes as purchasing alcohol or eating during the Ramadan fast.

Eventually, her village was wiped out entirely during the 2014 invasion, and the threatened families fled on foot toward Sinjar. Few survived. Stories about the violence against women that the Yazidis subsequently suffered – from rape to kidnapping to sexual slavery – are well known.

Today, she told me, it is very difficult to help the brutalized Yazidi women who have found their way to Munich. “They will not talk to anyone about what happened to them. They feel shamed and afraid. And it is very difficult to see their pain and not be able to help them.”

“We have lost everything,” one of these women told Binan. “They have taken everything from us. They have taken ourselves. Ourselves. Our identity, who we once were. We have nothing left.”

A day or two later, a friend and I shared pizza with a young man and woman who had recently arrived in Munich from Syria. They are Assyrian Orthodox Christians. He is from Damascus; she is from Latakia.

I won’t reveal their names, as they continue to be at risk. We’ll call them “Miriam” and “Yako.”

Binan has described the Yazidis as “a minority within a minority [Kurds].” The two Syrians I spoke to are in similar circumstances – Christians among the largely Muslim refugee minority in Europe.

After an agonizing farewell to their families, Miriam and Yako crossed into Turkey, found their way on foot to the coast (which took more than a week) and braved the notoriously dangerous journey across the water to Greece.

“The worst 17 hours of my life were in that boat,” Miriam told me. “The smugglers threw away our backpacks – food, water and whatever we’d tried to take with us.” Thankfully, they had hidden their documents under their clothes. “We were so crowded in the boat we could hardly move. The sun burned our skin. And everyone was deathly seasick.”

But other dangers awaited them. Miriam is a beautiful young woman. Along the way, Muslim men continuously assailed her. They groped her, threatened her, spit on her, followed her and at least once attempted to rape her.

“I had to constantly watch over her,” Yako recalled. “She didn’t even dare to visit the toilet on her own.

Their entire journey took 27 days.

“I’ve heard,” I began, hoping I wasn’t bringing up a touchy subject, “that there may be terrorists among the refugees. Did you have any reason to think so?”

They looked at each other and nodded. “Yes, there were Daesh (the Arabic word for ISIS or Islamic State) with us.”

“How did you know?”

“By things they said,” Yako told me. “You could even tell by the way they behaved.”

“And the look in their eyes,” Miriam added, with a shudder.

“So there were a few…?”

“No, many!” she said emphatically. “There were many,” Yako agreed.

For Westerners – Europeans and Americans alike – questions about the refugees often relate to the financial burden they will place on their host countries, or about their inability (or refusal) to assimilate culturally. And, of course, the possibility of jihadi infiltration is unquestionable.

But there are other considerations.

My new Yazidi friend Binan said something especially poignant at the end of our interview. I asked, “If you could say anything to the people in the West about what has happened to the Yazidis, what would you tell them?”

“I would like to say,” Binan began rather hesitantly, “I would like to inform them about the Yazidis, to interest them in what the Yazidis had to go through in Iraq and Syria.”

Then her voice broke. “I want to apologize for being in Germany. We are sorry to be here, but we became refugees in our own country, and were in great danger. We could do nothing about that.”

Christian and Yazidi refugees. Muslim women and girls trapped in Sharia enclaves. They all need our prayers. They – and those who help them, like the baroness and Binan – need our voices to tell their stories. And they need our wholehearted efforts to provide them with hope for the future.

Feb 12, 2016 | Jerusalem Notebook, Jews and the Jewish State

Just days after my family’s Christmas and New Years celebrations ended in California, and before I returned to Israel, I stopped at a drugstore to pick up a couple of travel-size products.

As I searched for Aisle 8, where small bottles of shampoo, hairspray, shower gel and other TSA-approved carry-on items are displayed, I noticed some rather urgent activity going on in Aisle 3, the greeting card section.

Christmas, New Year and Hanukkah cards were hurriedly being yanked off the racks, tossed into bins and carefully replaced by valentines of every shape, style and message. Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle was a vast array of chocolates in heart-shaped boxes.

It was only the first week of January. But America’s Valentine’s Day merchandising machine was already in full swing.

As I stood in the checkout line, my mind wandered to Israel. I tried my best to recall what Valentine’s Day looks like there, but I simply couldn’t remember. And then it dawned on me that there was an explanation for that: If you want to celebrate Valentine’s Day in Jerusalem, you have to go looking for it.

There are a couple of reasons for this valentine void. For one thing, Hallmark holidays haven’t yet hijacked the Israeli market – not Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or birthdays. Not even Valentine’s Day.

For another, Valentine’s Day is a theoretically a Christian holiday – ostensibly celebrating the life and martyrdom of a soldier named Valentine who was reportedly executed by Claudius Caesar for a heroic act. The story is sketchy, to say the least. There seem to have been several heroes with the same name.

Meanwhile, even in America, it’s tricky to try to explain how a courageous saint’s burial date has become an occasion for roses-are-red rhymes (sometimes risqué ones at that), pre-wrapped jewelry items studded with red rhinestones, and bouquets of red roses tied, of course, with red ribbons. Not to mention a zillion cards addressed to friends, classmates, family members and sweethearts.

And as for Israel? Granted, the lingerie shop window on Emek Refaim Street in Jerusalem currently features a few dozen red paper hearts serving as a backdrop for a slinky red nightgown and some other lacy items. But I looked in vain elsewhere, on both sides of the busy street – which boasts at least 10 gift shops – for any other signs of Valentine’s Day.

Interestingly, one possible explanation is that there is a Jewish holiday that bears some resemblance to Valentine’s Day. It’s called Tu B’Av, and it takes place in the summertime.

Tu B’Av, the 15th Day of Av, is both an ancient and modern holiday. Originally a post-biblical day of joy, it served as a matchmaking day for unmarried women in the second Temple period (before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.). Tu B’Av was almost unnoticed in the Jewish calendar for many centuries, but it has been rejuvenated in recent decades, especially in the modern state of Israel. In its modern incarnation it is gradually becoming a Hebrew-Jewish Day of Love, slightly resembling Valentine’s Day in English-speaking countries.

In any case, young Jerusalem lovers really don’t need a holiday to revel in their passion. As in the west, they are free to flirt, walk hand-in-hand, embrace and kiss (except in very religious communities) every day of the year. The radio plays love songs 24/7, amorous films are everywhere and wedding celebrations never cease. Love is always in the air.

But there’s another kind of love in Israel that seems rather exceptional to me, and uniquely Israeli. It’s not a hearts-and-flowers expression, but rather a kind of communal, brotherly love that I’ve rarely witnessed elsewhere

For example, a story recently appeared in the Israeli news site Algemeiner that caught my eye.

Dozens of Israelis answered a Facebook appeal to help a 90-year-old woman living alone in poor conditions in the northern part of the country. Photos documented her squalid surroundings. The following are samples of responses from complete strangers:

“Willing to give her a brand-new feather quilt, warm slippers and clothing. And where can I bring bedding and a winter coat?”

“I can organize food – easily, since I live in her area – and sheets and I can donate a table, and because I have a car, anyone can contact me to deliver things to her.”

“Interested in buying her a new heater, and if she needs any other electrical appliance, I’d be happy to buy that, too. Is there a cell phone number I can call?”

“Send me a cell number, and I’ll take care of doing her shopping and bring her blankets or whatever else she needs.”

“I have a new heater to give her and a used stove, if she needs it. I can deliver the heater today.”

“Is there a bank account where one can transfer money to her?”

“When can I get to work?”

“Hey, I’d love to know how I can donate supplies and to come and help renovate her house.”

As one writer pointed out, “This is the beautiful side of Israeli society, which so often gets overlooked in the fray of politics and conflict.”

In another recent story, a “social experiment” – a kind of “do you love your neighbor?” exercise – resembled episodes on the old Candid Camera TV show. A man pretending to be blind was videotaped asking passersby to give him change for a 20-shekel note. Except what he was holding in his hand was a 100-shekel note.

According to the video, “Every single person he stopped on the street – including some who approached to ask if he needed help – pointed out that the bill he was holding was, in fact, a 100-shekel bill. One man even gave him an additional 20 shekels. Other passersby behaved in exactly the same way when the same experiment was conducted with a 200-shekel bill.”

I was sorry to read that when a similar experiment was performed in the U.S., “many Americans took advantage of the situation.”

For me, an especially poignant Israeli-style “valentine” took place a few weeks ago. A young man who works in real estate and is about the age of my 30-something sons was in touch with me by phone about a referral I’d given him.

In passing, I asked him if he knew where I could purchase a new printer for my computer and have it delivered to my home. He called me back with a couple of websites, but both were in Hebrew, and apart from the HP logo and the prices, I couldn’t figure out what was being offered.

We talked again, and he looked at the sites and provided me with prices, features and phones numbers. I tried phoning a nearby store, but reached a robotic phone tree; not only was it in Hebrew, it also kept disconnecting my call. I decided to go to the store in a taxi, but there was a downpour so I thought I’d better wait.

When the young man called me back to check yet again, I told him what I’d decided to do.

“No, don’t do that,” he said, and then paused momentarily. “Look, I’m going to go buy the printer and bring it to you right now.”

“No! You don’t need to do that – I can do it!”

“No, I insist. It no big deal.”

“But…”

“I’ll be there in an hour.”

He appeared at my door (third floor, no elevator) an hour later, dripping with rainwater and carrying the printer. He had paid for it himself (of course I paid him back), installed it, called technical support to solve an ink cartridge issue – which took an hour – and didn’t leave until the job was done.

It’s true that there are many kinds of love, and the romantic version that inspires poems of the “roses are red, violets are blue” variety is a wonderful, exhilarating experience.

But the kind of love I’ve so often seen demonstrated in this war-torn nation is spontaneous, generous and guileless. I’m pretty sure it’s rooted in an eternal principle that believing Christians and Jews share. And it dates back to something very close to the Year One.

“Love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord” (Lev 19:18).

Greeting cards, red hearts, boxes of chocolates and bouquets of roses are optional.

Mar 1, 2016 | Jerusalem Notebook, Jews and the Jewish State

Living in Israel during the present American election cycle definitely has its pros and cons.

The pros have to do with intelligent conversations with thinking Israelis who aren’t addicted to sensationalist TV and never-ending social media.

The cons? It’s a little awkward trying to explain to Israelis how the so-called presidential debates have, in any way, offered serious opportunities to evaluate America’s presidential candidates.

This becomes especially difficult when both Israelis and Americans look at the record of the White House’s present occupant – once the darling of the campaign circuit and the media’s golden boy.

Will the next president be wise and strong enough to steady the Ship of State’s wavering course? Or to push the global “reset button?” Or, in non-metaphorical terms, to undo the enormous damage that has been done by the present administration’s feckless policies both at home and abroad?

Have the debates helped or hindered us in making wise choices?

My Facebook friend Clarice Feldman described it well:

The trigger for this week’s madness was what was absurdly called a “debate,” a format designed specifically to encourage the candidates to attack each other instead of explaining their views on significant issues. A Jerry Springer-type gladiatorial contest to up the network’s rating. Did you watch it? I didn’t. I like to get my information from the written word. I could get whatever meat was in it by spending a few minutes online and spared myself the discomfort of watching this disaster. I no longer consider watching these farcical entertainments a civic duty.

I couldn’t agree more. The lack of dignity, the mocking and the loss of courtesy have been appalling.

But beside the unpleasant shouting matches that the TV format demanded, I’ve been reminded how I deeply I dislike politics to begin with. Years ago, I edited a book called “Just Politics,” written by my friend and colleague Paul Marshall, whose Ph.D. is in political theory.

When I expressed to him my personal aversion to all things political, he wisely counseled me that although politics are indeed a dirty business, they really are very important. And nowhere are they more significant than in nations where decent and just politics are a matter of life and death.

Of course, Marshall was correct. And that’s precisely the case in Israel. One has to only look at the politics of the Oslo Accords and the “disengagement” from Gaza to see that destruction and bloodshed have followed in their wake – violence that continues to destroy and debase Israeli/Arab relations. Shortsighted, foolish and even well intentioned political choices can have devastating results.

Maybe that’s why most of my Israel friends are cringing (to put it mildly) at the “reality show,” “hate fest” or, probably most damning of all, “clown car” descriptions that have been laughingly applied to this year’s American presidential contest.

GOP Presidential Candidates Debate In Milwaukee

This has, no doubt, been exacerbated by the disagreeable price Israel continues to pay for America’s last presidential elections. The current United States administration has not only spurned Israel and her prime minister, but has turned its back on America’s other longtime allies in the Middle East.

To make matters worse, America’s Middle East policy has elevated the terror-supporting Islamic Republic of Iran to heights of glory that even its founder, “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, could never have envisioned in his wildest megalomaniacal dreams.

The Middle East is in the midst of a dangerous meltdown, thanks at least in part to our U.S. leadership’s seeming disinterest in massive death tolls, bloodthirsty dictators, bloodstained minorities, dispossession of innocents and, of course, that controversial little word: genocide.

But now we look to the future. The election. The inauguration. The newly anointed president of the United States who will have the unique challenge of trying to repair what has been broken.

In Israel, politics may be hair-raising, accusatory and personal, but people do like to get to the point. What do the various political parties bring to the table? What do they believe in? What do the representatives of those parties offer, both in military and political experience? What can they do and what will they do?

Around here, the picture isn’t so pretty at the moment. There is blood on the cobblestones of the Old City. A Tel Aviv café has been ripped apart by Arab gunfire. Communities in Judea and Samaria are losing fathers, mothers, sons and daughters to ongoing terrorism.

But that’s not the only problem. Along every border prowls a genuine threat to Israel’s security. The Islamic State in the Sinai. Hamas in Gaza. Instability in Jordan. Hezbollah in Lebanon. And Iran’s forces in a tug-of-war with Sunni radicals in Syria.

Yes, it gets emotional. Debates rage and op-eds rant. But no matter how much deliberation ensues, recent electoral results reflected Israeli voters’ desire for focused, experienced and tough-minded governance. Hence, Benjamin Netanyahu.

And then there’s America.

Some Americans are indeed concerned about the encroachment of Islamist terrorism that has persisted in recent years and which is often underplayed by media reports. But to many others, terrorism seems like a faraway problem. Economic troubles tend to eclipse dangers that threaten from abroad. Affordable healthcare is a worry, as is future financial security.

Meanwhile, one of the most alarming symptoms of all this is the tyranny of feelings vs. facts.

In popular culture, the question “How do you feel?” trumps (pardon the word) “What do you think?” Or even more offputtingly, “What do you believe?”

Many of the American candidates in question – and part of this was due to the “debate” format – seemed to be focused on stirring up anger, resentment, fear and hatred. And social media has magnified those impulses to a shocking degree. This almost entirely eclipses a call to sane thoughts, powerful ideas and foundational beliefs.

It’s long been my observation that Israelis – emotional though they may be – by and large tend to seek out the rational, the specific facts and the provable ideas. This is probably why America’s 2016 election process seems alien and even frightening to some. And infuriating to others.

Here’s how my friend Ruthie Blum illustrated the point, writing for The Algemeiner, a New York-based Jewish newspaper:

During Thursday night’s CNN-hosted Republican debate in Houston, Texas, candidate Marco Rubio finally took on leading contender Donald Trump, face-to-face, about Israel. Referring to Trump’s statements that he would be a “neutral broker” between Israel and the Palestinians, Rubio argued, “The Palestinians are not a real estate deal, Donald.”

“A deal is a deal,” Trump replied.

“A deal is not a deal when you’re dealing with terrorists,” Rubio said.

Rubio concluded: “No people on earth want peace more than Israel. No people have suffered more at the hands of terrorism than the people of Israel. If America doesn’t stand with Israel, who would we stand with?”

….

If the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians were a real-estate problem, even the Democrats would have been able to solve it. In fact, if it were an issue of dividing up plots of land, the Arabs of Palestine would have had a state starting in 1947. Indeed, if killing or kicking the Jews out had not been the true bone of contention all along, the Palestinians today could and would be leading the kind of normal lives that Israelis take for granted.

One of the challenges the United States faces amidst today’s battered “global village” is that whatever dangers threaten Israel, and indeed, threaten the Middle East’s millions of people, are not isolated. They are existential threats to the West as well. And despite many Americans’ longing to isolate – to leave the rest of the world behind and hunker down – that tempting option simply doesn’t work in today’s real world.

The Islamist terrorism that is ripping the Middle East apart has recently devastated Paris, and has put Britain’s security forces in an unprecedented state of high alert.

And setting aside 9/11, that same terrorism has also encroached on the U.S. in places such as Ft. Hood, Texas; Boston, Mass.; San Bernardino, Calif. and more.

So whether or not Americans want to be the so-called policemen of the world, there are self-evident consequences to turning a blind eye, both at home and abroad.

As one Israeli friend said very pointedly, “Americans needs to realize that when they vote for a candidate, they are not only voting for American interests – they are voting for what will happen in the rest of the world, as a result. Maybe they don’t like that fact, but it’s undeniably true.”

The abandonment of U.S. allies and the alignment with Iran – the No. 1 state supporter of global terrorism – has already led to a massive death toll in the Middle East, not to mention the largest tide of refugees since World War II, which is currently creating havoc in Europe and likely will eventually do the same in the U.S.

In light of all this, will goodhearted American citizens look beyond the shallow demagoguery spouted out by their self-serving and sometimes dishonest candidates? Will they demand a practical strategy behind every bumper-sticker promise? Will they choose to think and to assess their core beliefs, and not only rely on feelings?

By the way, what does fulfilling the slogan “Make America great again” really mean? What will it require?

My Israeli friends sometimes ask me those questions.

I wish I knew the answers.

Apr 6, 2016 | Christians and Minority Rights, Jerusalem Notebook, Jews and the Jewish State

I left Israel just two days after Easter. But though I’d been busy preparing to be abroad for a few weeks, the beauty of that holiday’s timeless miracle hadn’t left me. It’s a unique privilege to live in Jerusalem, where Christians believe the resurrection of Jesus took place more than 2,000 years ago. Taking a deep breath this past Easter morning, I had a sense that the holy city’s air still somehow carries a trace of glory.

But something else was also on my mind as my flight taxied and soared across the Mediterranean: the enormous terror attack that had taken place in Lahore, Pakistan on Easter Sunday. A suicide bomber killed at least 73 people – many of them children – targeting Christians who were celebrating the resurrection of Jesus in a crowded public park.

More than 300 people were injured; many were viciously assaulted by shrapnel – losing eyes or limbs – or were otherwise gravely wounded. The death toll will surely continue to rise.

The besieged park was packed; it was intentionally chosen because poverty-stricken Christian families traditionally gather there to enjoy the Easter holiday. Although it’s all they can afford to do, they commemorate the occasion with great joy.

At first glance, the attack appeared to be an Islamic State operation, and in fact, the Afghanistan-based Taliban terrorist group that carried it out – Jamaat-ul-Ahrar – has applauded ISIS in the past. Meanwhile, the group’s spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, told NBC news that the group “plans more ‘devastating’ attacks that will target Christians and other religious minorities as well as government installations.”

[Ehsan] denied that Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has any affiliation with the Islamic State, even though it has in the past expressed support for the Syria-based terror group.

Last week, NBC News reported that U.S. intelligence officials didn’t see any ISIS links to the Lahore attack, but that both Washington and Islamabad are concerned that the group has fostered informal and often clandestine ties with Pakistani militants that may be tied to unprecedented levels of violence against religious minorities and other civilian targets.

That same Sunday – a gorgeous, sunlit day in Jerusalem – also brought other troubling news. A Catholic priest, Father Tom Uzhunnalil, who was abducted during a brutal ISIS raid on a home for the elderly in Aden, Yemen, was initially reported to have been crucified on Good Friday. Today, there is some vague evidence that he is still alive. We can only pray that is so, and that God will spare him the cruelties he may well be facing.

But four nuns and numerous others who served with Uzhunnalil at that old folks’ home were not so fortunate. On March 4, they were hauled out of the building one by one and murdered in cold blood. The brutal attack on the Sisters of Charity is described in detail in a harrowing eyewitness account handwritten by a nun who was in hiding. I received a PDF of this horrifying document from a colleague and will quote only selectively from it. Its full details are almost too much to bear.

At 8:30 a.m., ISIS dressed in blue came in, killed guard and driver. Five young Ethiopian men (Christian) began running to tell the sisters ISIS was here to kill them. They were killed one by one. They tied them to trees, shot them in the head and smashed their heads …

They caught Sr. Judit and Sr. Reginet first, tied them up, shot them in the head and smashed their heads. They caught Sr. Anslem and Sr. Marguarite, tied them, shot them in the head and smashed their head in the sand…

A neighbor saw them put Fr. Tom in their car. They did not find a trace of Father anywhere…

International Business Times reported, “Rev. Thomas Uzhunnalil, a Salesian priest, was kidnapped in Yemen this month during a raid on a Catholic nursing home run by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. Fighters with the militant group also known as ISIL or ISIS claimed they killed him just as the Romans killed Jesus, the event that Christians remember on Good Friday each year.”

Our prayers continue for Uzhunnalil, that he may be spared. The story of his work in Yemen was barely reported; only a few random accounts about his possible crucifixion made the news. The fate of the nuns and other workers in the home were virtually unmentioned in major media outlets.

Just a couple of weeks after the attack on the Yemen Christian home for the aged, the Jewish Agency secretly airlifted approximately 20 Yemenite Jews to Israel. Islamist terrorists particularly target Jews and Christians, and the sooner these “People of the Book” can be removed from the path of ISIS, al-Qaida and radical groups, the better their chances of survival.

Islamist attacks on Jews and Christians is, in fact, one theme in my book “Saturday People, Sunday People.” Because of that publication, I was invited to participate in the Nexus Conference, which was hosted in New Haven, Conn. by Christian Union, a fellowship of believing students at Ivy League schools. I was on my way there when I left Israel on March 29.

At this impressive conference, which welcomed some 500 bright, young Christians from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, Penn and Columbia, I also enjoyed a reunion with my friend Baroness Cox, a member of Britain’s House of Lords and an indefatigable warrior for the rights of Christians who are persecuted for their faith.

My role at the Nexus Conference was to discuss with a group of students interested in media and journalism what it is like to be a Christian truth-teller in a not-so-Christian field.

Cox was a plenary speaker who highlighted the persecution of Christians in places that are rarely – if ever – mentioned in major media reports. She spoke about the small, Christian enclave in Nagorno-Karabakh (where she and I met in 2003), which is once again under assault by Azerbaijan’s Turks.

She described the plight of Christians in Burma, where multiplied thousands have literally fled for their lives to squalid refugee camps in Thailand.

She talked about Nigeria, where Boko Haram has murdered hundreds of Christians.

And she reminded us of South Sudan, where the Islamist regime in Khartoum continues to target and murder Christians who refuse to convert to Islam.

Many of us have written at length about the savage abuses suffered by Christians in Iraq and Syria at the hands of ISIS, and about the tens of thousands of refugees who remain behind.

And we have tried to find words to describe the beheading of 20 Coptic Christians (19 of them Egyptian) in Libya. Those beheadings probably provided the best-reported persecution story in recent years.

Unfortunately, less sensational stories rarely reach the West.

As I write this, I am in touch with a friend who is working to provide food and encouragement to Iraqi and Syrian refugees in Turkey. At one point, my friend and her colleagues were taken into a private room by local authorities in a Muslim village and read to from the Quran; it was “suggested” that these Christians convert to Islam. Their refusal to do so was received with cold stares and a palpable sense of danger.

Of course, Islam isn’t the only threat. Some Hindu sects abuse Christians in India. Buddhists do likewise in Sri Lanka.

And those who follow persecution issues closely know that the world’s worst persecutor of Christians is North Korea. Open Doors International once again named North Korea’s Stalinist-style dictatorship as the No. 1 persecutor of Christians in its recently released 2016 World Watch List.

Far away from the brutalities of persecution’s front lines, I was inspired and encouraged to be among the vibrant young Christians at the Nexus Conference. The students were bright, energetic and sophisticated. But most of them were not really aware of Christian persecution’s scope and intensity. That troublesome fact reflects far more on the U.S. media’s indifference to the subject matter than on the very evident interest of those young believers.

And, like most Christians in today’s troubled world, once they heard what is happening, they were unsure about what today’s catastrophic carnage might mean to them. What should they do? What difference might they be able to make?

I usually suggest that people share the stories they hear on social media to their churches, social groups and wherever else they can pass the word, as well as write to their political representatives and financially help support trustworthy organizations.

But I suppose the most compelling answer I’ve heard in awhile was offered during Cox’s presentation. She put it this way: “You may not be able to do everything, but you can’t not do something! So pray for these suffering people, and as you pray, ask God what he wants you to do to make a difference.”

Once that becomes clear, as the Bible says, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.”

What better gift of gratitude can we offer, rejoicing in that glorious Easter miracle in Jerusalem? And how better can we remember those who suffer so greatly for believing in it?

May 3, 2016 | Christians and Minority Rights, Jerusalem Notebook

Sunday, April 24 commemorated the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. The day was observed by the world’s Armenian churches and remembered solemnly in many other Christian gatherings. And, in the face of today’s ongoing genocide in Iraq and Syria, it served as a grim reminder of the terrible abuses Christian communities have endured for centuries – and continue to suffer.

Less than a year after the outbreak of World War I, on April 24, 1915, Ottoman Turkish authorities arrested hundreds of Armenian professors, lawyers, doctors, clergymen and other elites in Constantinople (now Istanbul). These revered members of the community were jailed, tortured and hastily massacred.

But that was only the beginning.

As I wrote for The Philos Project just a year ago, “That mass murder marked the initiation of a death sentence on an entire religious population. When reports of the leaderships’ slaughter spread across Turkey, terror gripped Armenian cities, towns and villages, which in 1915 were home to approximately 2,100,000 souls. According to the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, by 1922, only 387,800 Armenians remained alive.”

Of course, the world’s Armenian Christians can never forget the fate of their forebears in that notorious religious cleansing. And, in fact, anti-Christian forces in the Middle East will not let them forget.

Just over two years ago, in March 2014, Sunni radicals swept through the Armenian village of Kassab, Syria. Early that Friday morning, Kassab was violently attacked, its churches desecrated, its families driven out. Since then, Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists have occupied the town’s abandoned homes and businesses.

For both historic and present-day reasons, many of Kassab’s dispossessed victims blame Turkey for turning a blind eye to the invaders as they crossed the nearby Turkish border into Syria; some claimed to have seen injured fighters carried back into Turkey along the same route.

To this day, it is nearly impossible to determine the fate of the Armenian Christians who fled Kassab in 2014. According to several reports, there were hundreds of them. Tragically, some of them were elderly sons and daughters of families that fled the Turks in 1915 and settled in Kassab.

Fast-forward to 2016, and this year brought Armenian Christians yet another bloodstained reminder. On April 26,

Speaking to AsiaNews over the phone from Aleppo, Armenian Sevag Tashdjian said, “Islamic terrorist groups supported by Turkey” who “cross Turkish-Syrian border trafficking arms, ammunition and stolen goods” are responsible.

“We woke up under the bombs; it is Turkey’s gift,” he added. “Entire neighborhoods have caught fire and we went under the bombs to bring relief to sick and elderly trapped in their homes and take them to safety, to safer underground shelters.”

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The few open shopkeepers closed their doors, and for the first time in five years of conflict, “anger has overcome fear.” It must be said that the Aleppo Armenians are the group who paid the highest price so far in the war, with the destruction of the ancient churches (including the church of the 40 martyrs, a 17th century architectural jewel). The churches were destroyed by explosives placed in underground tunnels carved from areas controlled by pro-Turkish Islamic terrorists).

According to AsiaNews, the attacks on Aleppo’s Armenian community killed 17, including three children.

A day later, a PDF file was received by my colleague Nina Shea at Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, written by the Rev. Haroutune Selimian of Bethel Church in Aleppo (I quote it with permission). It contains further details about the attacks on Aleppo, along with a number of heartbreaking photos.

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The situation in Aleppo has taken a turn for the worse since 24th of April 2016. Dozens of mortar bombs have damaged of completely destroyed buildings in the predominately Christian … neighborhoods … as the opposition intensified its offensive in areas of Aleppo held by regime forces.

There has been systematic shelling of Aleppo in the past three days, with the help of artillery, mortar and other kinds of shells. Although the firing is carried out from the same positions, it is not clear which group is conducting it.

We call on all governments, especially Western nations, who are supporting the opposition forces to immediately use their leverage to halt the attacks on Armenian neighborhoods. Those governments which do not work to end the operations will be considered accomplices in the anti-Armenian attacks and all other crimes.

On that same day, other explosions in Armenian areas were also reported, including a bus bombing in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital. That is being investigated.

Another explosion took place in the war-torn Armenian Christian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. And that one caught my attention. I have a personal connection to that beautiful, mountainous location.

Many westerners are not even aware of the existence of a place called Nagorno-Karabakh (called Artsakh by the Armenian locals), much less about its recent violent history. Once a part of the ancient Armenian Kingdom – with roots reaching back to the second century – the present upheaval dates back to Stalin’s regime in the USSR, when the dictator’s divisive remapping endeavors surrounded the Artsakh Christians with Islamic Azerbaijan.

I first became acquainted with Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh and its beleaguered Christian community just a few years after Sept. 11. I was there with friends who were touring both the Armenian enclave and Yerevan, Armenia. We were guided by Baroness Cox – a heroic human rights advocate who serves in Britain’s House of Lords (I was later to write her biography).

Cox was deeply involved in assisting Nagorno-Karabakh’s Christians during the bloody war that exploded shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union. At that time, Artsakh had voted to secede from Azerbaijan and to unite with Armenia.

As with many such disputes in today’s world, there was a religious component. The Armenian Christians wanted to be independent of the Muslim, Turkish-oriented Azerbaijanis. The memory of the Armenian genocide could never be far from their minds, and they wanted to situate themselves as far away as possible from Turkey’s influence, safely within Armenia’s borders.

The dispute turned violent and deadly once the USSR collapsed, and it was a horrific clash. But somehow – rather miraculously – the ridiculously outmanned, outgunned Armenian/Karabakhi troops defeated the Azeris.

By the time the conflict ended with a shaky peace treaty in 1994, the desperate Azeris had enlisted savage Arab and Afghan jihadi warriors to fight alongside their dispirited troops.

For me, that alone was thought provoking.

Meanwhile, according to observers, the Armenians fought with passion, while the Azeris were increasingly demoralized. The New York Times reported, “In Stepanakert [the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh], it is impossible to find an able-bodied man – whether volunteer from Armenia or local resident – out of uniform. [Whereas in] Azerbaijan, draft-age men hang out in cafes.”

The death toll for the conflict in the early 1990s was some 6,000 Armenians vs. 20,000 Azeris.

Cox – who had managed to provide large shipments of medication and other essential support to the Armenians during the war – led us to various battle sites, where we spoke to Christians who had survived the fighting.

The Archbishop (Armenian Orthodox) of Stepanakert showed me his large and perfectly preserved church, which he described as the “beating heart of Arthsakh.” A number of outbuildings, including a monastery, had been utterly flattened by Azeri Grad missile fire (the topography in Nagorno-Karabakh bears a startling resemblance to the Golan Heights overlooking Galilee).

“It was as if an Invisible Hand had completely covered our church,” the amiable cleric told me with a smile, cupping one hand, shelter-like, above the palm of the other. “Only one bullet hole.”

I could see a tiny puncture in a window at the top of the sanctuary. The lack of damage seemed surreal to me. Something stirred in my soul.

A day or two later, the baroness took us to see the eternal flame, which commemorates the Armenian genocide in Yerevan.

Since 9/11, I had been increasingly conscious of the proverbial line in the sand between the western, Judeo-Christian world and the encroachment of Islamist violence. Clearly we were in a war – not only a war of ideas, but also a war that had already become matter of life and death.

As I stood there, feeling the heat of that memorial furnace nearly scorching my face, I remembered the archbishop’s words. And, more or less without meaning to, I made a quiet decision:

“I want to be on the side of the Invisible Hand.”

I think that decision ultimately led me to Jerusalem, where the same battle is being fought on a daily basis.

As for Nagorno-Karabakh, unfortunately, the conflict is not over. In recent weeks, the worst outbreak of violence since the 1994 ceasefire has erupted. And mightier powers than the locals are staking their claims: Nagorno-Karabakh is becoming a crucible in the simmering feud between Islamist Turkey and Christian Russia.

On the same Sunday morning that Armenian Christians said their prayers of remembrance for the victims of the 1915 genocide, the fighting flared up again: Explosions, howitzers and accusations blasted away on both sides.

Just days later, U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk responded to the Azeri’s aggression:

The time has come for Azerbaijan to face consequences from the United States and the international community for its blatant military aggression against the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.

After years of saber rattling, Azerbaijan’s four-day assault on the NKR earlier this month is its most egregious attack since it signed a ceasefire agreement with Armenia and the NKR in 1994. These recent military actions indicate the clear need for new measures to modify a cease-fire framework that is not working.

With no system to referee the cease-fire, Azerbaijan has become increasingly belligerent while facing no consequences for its violations. This must change.

The choice for [Azerbaijan’s] President Aliyev is clear: Either he subscribes to diplomatic negotiations with the Armenians under peaceful circumstances or continues with a belligerent and futile policy of attrition.

If he chooses the latter, he should know that every act of Azerbaijani aggression will only further validate the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic’s argument that it go the way of Kosovo.

And so it goes:

Yesterday’s Armenian Genocide.

Today’s genocide of Assyrian Christians and Yazidis in Iraq and Syria.

At the same time, terrorist detonations in Paris, Brussels, Jerusalem and San Bernardino. Massacres in Nigeria and Sudan. Beheadings in Libya and the Philippines.

These are just some of the many battlegrounds in what some journalists are calling “The Long War.”

And we’re all in it. It’s quite true that we haven’t declared war on anyone. But war has been declared on us. So some of us fight with weapons. Others launch assaults with the written word. And some are prayer warriors.

But if you want to know more about what The Long War is all about, just ask the Armenians, the Assyrian Christians, or the Israelis.

And if you want to see the action more clearly yourself, step across the line. Pray for wisdom. Like me, you may unexpectedly find yourself deployed in the service of the Invisible Hand.

Jun 2, 2016 | Christians and Minority Rights, Jerusalem Notebook, Muslims and Muslim Majority States | 0 comments

Encouraging reports continue to emerge about significant improvements in Israel’s relationship with Egypt. With Cairo battling an explosive ISIS presence in the Sinai Peninsula, and destroying Hamas smuggling tunnels into Gaza, news of quiet cooperation between the two countries comes as a breath of fresh air. Overall, considering the ongoing bloodbaths elsewhere in the region, such positive accounts can’t help but spark a flicker of optimism in Israeli hearts.

But for those of us who are concerned with Christian persecution, all has not been well in recent days. On May 25, the Daily Telegraph reported a horrendous attack on a village of Coptic Christians in El-Karm, located in Egypt’s southern province of Minya.

The trouble began – as anti-Christian attacks in Muslim-majority countries often do – with a salacious rumor. The story in this case was that a Christian man, Ashraf Thabet, was having a sexual relationship with a Muslim woman. In an Islamic-oriented culture, this portends a death sentence – an honor killing – on the purported lovers.

Once the accused adulterer got wind of the local gossip, he ran for his life, with his wife and children in tow. His parents, knowing very well how vulnerable they also were, rushed to the police for protection.

That, as it turned out, was a wasted trip.

The Telegraph wrote,

The next day, around 300 Muslim men set fire to and looted [the [parents’] house…and stripped the mother naked out on the street. They also set fire to and looted six other houses, witnesses told Reuters.

“They burned the house and went in and dragged me out, threw me in front of the house and ripped my clothes. I was just as my mother gave birth to me and was screaming and crying,” the woman, who requested anonymity, told Reuters.

Later identified as Soaad Thabet, the 70-year-old mother of the accused was not only stripped naked. She was paraded around the neighborhood, humiliated beyond description and fearing for her life. It may be difficult for western readers to imagine the degree of cultural dishonor and disgrace to which this innocent woman was subjected.

This was, indeed, a sensational story. But it was nothing new to those of us who keep an eye on such incidents. Muslim attacks on Coptic Christians aren’t exactly a novelty in Egypt. As I wrote just about a year ago,

The Copts’ historic Christian community – founded in Alexandria during the first century CE by the Apostle Mark – comprises between 8 and 10 percent of Egypt’s 83 million citizens.

The Copts’ bloodlines are even more ancient than their Christian faith; they date back to the pharaohs, centuries before the Arab invasions in the seventh century CE. The Coptic language, still used in liturgy, is the closest existing language to that of ancient Egypt.

However, despite their historical heritage, as a religious minority in a Muslim-majority state, the Copts have lived for centuries under the dhimmi status spelled out in Islamic Sharia law. Simply put, that means that they are treated as inferior citizens. Meanwhile, in recent years, Copts have suffered escalating attacks, as Islamist extremists have specifically targeted them.

Christians in Egypt suffered exceptional abuse during the brief regime of Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi. Then, in July 2013, in response to multiplied millions of Egyptians taking to the streets in protest against the Brotherhood, Egypt’s military removed Morsi from office.

This stunning turnaround offered some hope to Egyptians who were both wary and weary of the Brotherhood’s efforts to seize control of all branches of government. It also unleashed even greater violence upon the Copts.

After a litany of horrific incidents in 2011-2013, and after the brutal massacre of 21 Coptic Christian men on a Libyan beach in February 2015, reports of attacks on Christians have diminished somewhat, although such episodes have not ceased.

Meanwhile, since his election in May 2014, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has taken several highly visible steps toward bettering state relations with the Coptic community, including his unprecedented move in attending last winter’s Coptic Christmas Mass, celebrated by Pope Tawadros.

And following the recent Minya outrage, President Sisi issued a statement demanding that officials hold the perpetrators accountable. He also ordered that the seven Christian houses, which had been burned and looted, be rebuilt and restored by the state, at no expense to the owners.

In light of all this, I asked my Egyptian colleague and friend Samuel Tadros – senior fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and the author of the critically-acclaimed book Motherland Lost: The Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity – if there has been real progress in relations between the government and the Coptic community. Tadros explained,

A spike in attacks came after the 2011 revolution for two reasons; collapse of security and rise of Islamists not just on national level, but on local one, where they attempted to force their will on villages and small towns.

Following the removal of President Morsi, these two factors have been somewhat contained. Policing is a bit better, not by much – they still ignore attacks on Copts – but there is somewhat better security in the streets; and Islamists are on the run.

The result is that the Copts are back to a bit higher number of attacks than during the Mubarak era, which of course is not something to look up to. But we have to remember, the president has changed, but the local security officer who won’t protect the Copts is the same man, the local mayor or governor who will hold the reconciliation session is the same official, and most importantly the neighbors who hate the Copts are the same neighbors.

Sam Tadros’ reference to “reconciliation sessions” is of great importance. These sessions amount to a disgraceful tactic, which is used again and again following incidents of Christian persecution. Such events essentially release violent perpetrators from all responsibility.

The idea of reconciliation may sound good on the surface: why not bring together the village’s Christians and Muslims so they can work out their differences and get along with one another?

What really happens, instead, is that an attitude of moral equivalency prevails. “Everyone” is responsible for the problem. Therefore, the Muslim radicals, who may already have been arrested and even indicted for their criminal behavior, are for all practical purposes “forgiven.”

The mob attack in El-Karm, Minya, was no exception to this scheme.

Bishop Macarius of Minya and Abu Qirqas, who was delegated by Pope Tawadros II to speak on behalf of the Coptic Orthodox Church on the Minya case, denounced the subsequent reconciliation meeting, stating that it would prevent the perpetrators from being held accountable. “I refused to attend the meeting so as to deliver a message that enforcing the law should come before any meeting,” he said in an official statement.

Sam Tadros goes on to say,

There are several problems with the reconciliation programs that take place after every attack on Copts. First they are non-judicial practices that replace the courts. As such, no punishment is ever handed down to the attackers. By not punishing the attackers, the sessions create a culture of impunity. You can attack Copts and get away with it.

Secondly, the sessions end up giving the attackers what they want: If they were objecting to a church being built, no church is built; if they were angry after a rumor about a Christian man insulting Islam or having a relationship with a Muslim woman, then he and his extended family are forced out of the village.

As such, the sessions create a culture of encouragement. If you are unhappy with something the Copts did, attack their homes, burn some houses, loot a few shops and not only will you get away with it, but your actions will be rewarded by giving you what you want.

Lastly, the sessions create a false impression that the problem has been solved or that there is no problem between Copts and Muslims in the first place. This, in turn, provides no incentive for the state to take the issue seriously and attempt to solve it.

Of course it’s true that Christians are meant to forgive. We are also called to be peacemakers. But at the same time, while being gentle as doves, we are equally advised to be “Wise as serpents.” With that in mind, there seems to be much wisdom in the Coptic leaders’ resistance to the phony peace and forgiveness promoted in Egypt’s reconciliation sessions.