* Sadly, almost no one is particularly interested in the plight of Christian Arabs.
I don’t think it takes much analysis to see why Obama’s lack of interest in Christian Arabs is not much different from Dubya’s lack of real interest. Most humans have a “bully” instinct, an instinctive contempt for losers and failures. Christian Arabs are the losers of the Middle East – once dominant, then living for centuries at the mercy of their Muslim overlords. Even in the 19th century most European Christians never seem to have had much sympathy for them.
* When Trump referred to the Orlando terrorist as “an Afghan” in his speech on Monday, journos jumped on Twitter to correct him: “He was born in America!”.
Now we hear the killer referred to Afghanistan as “my country” and claimed affiliation with the Islamic State. Had he called himself a woman, the PC left would insist he was a woman. But Trump calling him an Afghan is a mark of ignorance.
* For today’s “left,” if you’re born with male genitalia but identify as a woman – you’re a woman. On the other hand, if you’re born in America but identify with your Afghan ancestors, your an American. (At least, if you do anything bad).
* The Obama administration, including Hillary Clinton, blamed the 9/11/2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. ambassador to Libya in Benghazi on a Coptic Christian’s YouTube video. Copts are Egyptian Christians though the Obama administration appears to consider them to be Arabs (viz. “Arab Spring”).
An analogy would be if in the 1930s, the U.K. ambassador in Germany was murdered by a group of Nazis and the U.K. prime minister blamed anti-Hitler literature, produced by a German Jew living in the U.K., for the murder. How would “history” view this Prime Minister?
* During Ottoman times and presumably before, Christians and Muslims were viewed as separate groups. The people who today we identify as Christian Arabs would have considered themselves to be Assyrians, Chaldeans, Copts, Maronites, Greek Orthodox, etc., but not Arabs. Arabs were Muslim.
However starting in the 1920s, Arab nationalism was invented by a few intellectuals and some Christians in these regions began identifying as Arab. After the rise of secular dictators in the 40s and 50s, these regimes had an interest in promoting a supposed shared ethnic identity among the people and suppressed separate identifications. Many Christians became enthusiastic participants in the new nationalistic Baathist regimes, the PLO and so on.
Now with the rise of Islamism the Christians of the region have discovered how the Muslims actually feel about them, and it is often not as fellow co-ethnics. As the old Muslim saying goes ‘First the Saturday People, then the Sunday People,” meaning once the Arab countries have been rid of Jews, which was accomplished after 1948, they can be rid of Christians. At this point they largely are. For example Jordan has gone from 30% Christian in 1950 to 5% today. ISIS may be removing the last traces of the 2000 year old Assyrian Christian community from its territory.
Lessons of history usually go unlearned, but many people in the West would benefit from understanding what happened to the Christians of the Middle East. They tried to ally with Muslims only to find out that the alliance was all take and no give.
