Trump
Administration Vows to Aid Mideast Christians
by John Rossomando
IPT News
October 27, 2017
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 Lobbyists for
Christians in the Middle East are used to getting a cold shoulder from
Washington, but Vice President Mike Pence told those gathered in Washington
Wednesday for the In
Defense of Christians (IDC) summit that things were changing.
Pence contrasted the Trump administration's attitude toward Christians
with its predecessor by using the term "radical Islamic
terrorism" to describe those attacking Christians. Protecting Middle
East Christians will be a priority for the Trump administration in the
post-ISIS caliphate era, Pence said.
"That's why under President Donald Trump, we're taking the fight to
the terrorists on our terms on their soil," Pence said.
"We will not rest until we hunt down ISIS and destroy it at its
source, so that it can no longer threaten our people or anyone who calls
the Middle East home."
The U.S. would not ignore the pleas of genocide victims, he said,
promising that USAID, instead of the United Nations, would take direct
charge of providing aid to Christians and other religious minorities.
IDC lobbied for years to get USAID to distribute aid instead of the
U.N., which it and others believe has performed poorly. Members of Congress
from both parties likewise pledged overarching support for Mideast
Christians at Capitol Hill breakfast and lunch sessions Thursday where In
Defense of Christians supporters from across the country and Patriarch
Bechara Boutros Rai, head of Lebanon's influential Maronite Catholic
Church, heard them speak.
The collapse of the ISIS caliphate isn't the end of the peril Christians
face because the group continues to be a problem in Egypt and Africa. It
also is in the process of morphing back into a guerilla group in Iraq and
Syria, which poses a continuing threat to Christians. Iran also looms large
in the background as a threat to Christian populations.
Throughout the conference, speakers complained about the West's
indifference to the plight of Christian minorities in the Middle East.
Pence's commitment "was the biggest statement on record in history
in terms of a statement of both support and concrete policies to be
directed toward helping Christian communities," IDC vice president and
senior adviser Andrew Doran told The Investigative Project on Terrorism.
"It will have to be followed up with many, many substantive policy
changes."
Negative attitudes toward Christians in the U.S. and in the Middle East
hamper such work, he said.
In some cases, attitudes about gay rights or past evils done in the name
of Christianity by Western groups have caused many American Christians to
deem Mideast Christians unworthy of protection, said Mark Tooley, president
of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.
"They conceive of Christians as only the persecutors, never the
persecuted; they want to apologize for the Crusades or imperialism,"
Tooley said. "Even if they acknowledge there are persecuted Christians
around the world, they surmise that Christianity is too compromised to
merit sympathy, much less advocacy."
This position exists although Mideast Christians have a different history,
suffering centuries of oppression under Muslim rule. They also were
victimized by Western Crusaders who regarded them as heretics.
Western inaction has contributed to the loss of half of Syria's prewar
Christian population. In 2003, 1.5 million Christians lived in Iraq. Today
that number is over just more than 200,000. Persecution of Copts in Egypt by ISIS and Islamic extremism in broader Egyptian
society also have triggered an exodus that Coptic Orphans
co-founder Nermien Riad said could lead to millions of Copts leaving Egypt
over the next 50 years.
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Patriarch Bechara
Boutros Rai
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Previous efforts to get the West to take up the cause of Mideast
Christians have "fallen on deaf ears," Patriarch Bechara Boutros
Rai said.
"People don't give enough value to Christians in the Middle
East," he said.
His colleague, Patriarch John X, head of the Damascus-based Greek
Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, called on the U.S. to push for peace in
Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and throughout the rest of the region.
"Christians in the Middle East are going to stay there because we
were born there as God wished, and in the end, we will die there,"
John X said, recalling the 2013 jihadist kidnapping of two Orthodox
bishops in Aleppo, one of whom was his brother.
Sometimes, several speakers Thursday said, policymakers have difficulty
understanding how helping Christians across the Middle East, from Egypt to
Iraq, was vital to U.S. national interests. This particularly comes into
play getting past Turkey's opposition to any U.S. recognition of the
Ottoman genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks during World War I.
"It is clear that the policy is set in Ankara and not in
Washington," said Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of
America.
Hamparian was among those physically attacked by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's
bodyguards in May while they peacefully protested outside the Turkish
ambassador's residence in Washington. He recalled that Turkey stood with
the bodyguards against him and the other protesters and treated them as
victims.
"Factors like this should inform our alliances," Hamparian
said, noting that America's NATO commitments with Turkey were important to
U.S. policymakers. "There should also be an accountability
element."
Christians in the Middle East help to moderate their Muslim neighbors, summit
speakers said, and it is in America's interest to encourage religious
pluralism of the sort that exists in Lebanon.
"A region without Christians is more extreme and dangerous,"
Rai said.
He joined many other speakers who argued that Middle East Christians
were among the best educated people in the region and that the Christian
faith's emphasis of loving one's enemies moderated their Muslim neighbors.
Lebanon, where Christians, Sunnis, Shias and Druze have lived together
in relative harmony since the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1990, was
presented as an example for the rest of the Middle East. Speakers expressed
alarm at the threat to the country's delicate religious balance they see
posed by the 1.5 million mostly Sunni Muslim Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
Many of Rai's generation have bitter memories of their country's civil
war, which they say was triggered by half a million Palestinians moving
into Lebanon in the 1960s and 70s. They worry that the Syrian refugees put
an incredible economic strain on Lebanon's scarce resources that could
reignite the conflict.
Iran remains an unpredictable wild card for Christians from Lebanon to
Iraq.
Tehran, not Lebanese politics regarding Syrian refugees, could lead to
the next war there, warned Alberto Fernandez, who served as coordinator for
Strategic Counterterrorism Communications at the State Department in the
Obama administration. If Hizballah attacks Israel under orders from its
Iranian masters, the resulting disaster would send the region "to
hell."
In Iraq, recently-liberated Christians face threats from
Iranian-controlled militias. Hundreds of Christians living in the northern
Iraqi village of Tel Skuf were driven out after being by shelled by the
militia on Tuesday, said Loay Mikael, head of the Foreign Relations
Committee of the Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council. Tel Skuf was
rebuilt after ISIS left with help from the Hungarian government.
Now the challenge remains to end the wars and make it possible for the
Christians to return home.
Related Topics: John
Rossomando, Christian
persecution, In
Defense of Christians, USAID,
Mike
Pence, Bechara
Boutros Rai, Andrew
Doran, Mark
Tooley, Institute
on Religion and Democracy, Nermian
Riad, Coptic
Orphans, Arman
Hamparian, Armenian
genocide, Loay
Mikael
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