Who Will Stand Up for the Christians?
The
Middle East and parts of central Africa are losing entire Christian
communities that have lived in peace for centuries. The terrorist group
Boko Haram has kidnapped and killed hundreds of Christians this year —
ravaging the predominantly Christian town of Gwoza, in Borno State in
northeastern Nigeria, two weeks ago. Half a million Christian Arabs have
been driven out of Syria during the three-plus years of civil war there. Christians have been persecuted and killed in countries from Lebanon to Sudan.
Historians may look back at this period and wonder if people had lost their bearings. Few reporters have traveled to Iraq
to bear witness to the Nazi-like wave of terror that is rolling across
that country. The United Nations has been mostly mum. World leaders seem
to be consumed with other matters in this strange summer of 2014. There
are no flotillas traveling to Syria or Iraq. And the beautiful
celebrities and aging rock stars — why doesn’t the slaughter of
Christians seem to activate their social antennas?
President
Obama should be commended for ordering airstrikes to save tens of
thousands of Yazidis, who follow an ancient religion and have been
stranded on a mountain in northern Iraq, besieged by Sunni Muslim
militants. But sadly, airstrikes alone are not enough to stop this
grotesque wave of terrorism.
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
(ISIS) is not a loose coalition of jihadist groups, but a real military
force that has managed to take over much of Iraq with a successful
business model that rivals its coldblooded spearhead of death. It uses
money from banks and gold shops it has captured, along with control of
oil resources and old-fashioned extortion, to finance its killing
machine, making it perhaps the wealthiest Islamist terrorist group in
the world. But where it truly excels is in its carnage, rivaling the
death orgies of the Middle Ages. It has ruthlessly targeted Shiites,
Kurds and Christians.
“They
actually beheaded children and put their heads on a stick” a
Chaldean-American businessman named Mark Arabo told CNN, describing a
scene in a Mosul park. “More children are getting beheaded, mothers are
getting raped and killed, and fathers are being hung.”
This week, 200,000 Aramaeans fled their ancestral homeland around Nineveh, having already escaped Mosul.
The
general indifference to ISIS, with its mass executions of Christians
and its deadly preoccupation with Israel, isn’t just wrong; it’s
obscene.
This
bond between Jews and Christians makes complete sense. We share much
more than most religions. We read the same Bible, and share a moral and
ethical core. Now, sadly, we share a kind of suffering: Christians are
dying because of their beliefs, because they are defenseless and because
the world is indifferent to their suffering.
Good
people must join together and stop this revolting wave of violence.
It’s not as if we are powerless. I write this as a citizen of the
strongest military power on earth. I write this as a Jewish leader who
cares about my Christian brothers and sisters.
The Jewish people understand all too well what can happen when the world is silent. This campaign of death must be stopped.
Anti-Christ is this Satan Islamists. The last hours of their deaths SATAN (Islam) are in high speed killing the children of the living GOD. But the evil Islamists will be defeated. Million left and keep leaving SATAN Islamists inspite of persecution.
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