Yair Rosenberg wrote this article and your Watchman
totally agrees with him.
Last week, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz walked off the stage at a dinner supporting
Middle Eastern Christians, after the pro-Israel portion of his remarks drew
heckling from some in the audience. “If you will not stand with Israel and the
Jews,” he declared, “then I will not stand with you.” The incident has sparked
a heated but thoughtful debate among conservatives about the moral complexities
of supporting both the Jewish state and persecuted Middle East Christians,
given that the latter are not always favorably disposed towards the former.
While this conversation is important, and Christians, Jews, conservatives,
liberals alike could benefit from reading some of the smarter takes on the subject, the
firestorm over Cruz’s walkout has had several less salutary consequences.
First, it subordinated the dire plight of the Middle
East’s Christians–who are being brutally cleansed from the region–to a partisan
squabble. And second, it has turned Israel into a litmus test over whether
those Christians deserve outside support, when in fact Jews and the Jewish state
have been actively working to bolster that support, without making any such
demands. Whether one agrees with Cruz’s actions or not, then, it is important
to refocus our attention on those in desperate need, and to emphasize the many
Jewish efforts to assist them. Here are
some of them.
Christians who fled Qaraqosh, Syria rest at St. Joseph's church in Arbil, Kurdistan |
On August 19, as war was still raging between Israel and
Hamas, Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, took to the
pages of the New York Times not to advocate for Israel, but to
advocate for the Middle East’s Christians. In an op-ed titled “Who Will Stand Up For The
Christians?” Lauder wrote,
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.
Christians of Qaraqosh, Syria |
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 piece has been shared on social media more than
110,000 times. In an earlier June speech in Budapest, Lauder told a gathering of Christians, “We will
never tolerate any kind of anti-Christian threats, just as we will not tolerate
anti-Semitism,” adding, “Your fight is my fight.”
Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi Emeritus of the United
Kingdom and one of Europe’s leading public intellectuals, has also been
outspoken on the subject long before it was on much of the Western world’s
radar. In August 2013, he told the Telegraph that the persecution of Middle Eastern
Christians was “the religious equivalent of ethnic cleansing.”
We are seeing Christians in Syria in great
danger, we are seeing the burning of Coptic churches in Egypt. There is a large
Coptic population in Egypt and for some years now it has been living in fear.
Two years ago the last church in Afghanistan was destroyed, certainly closed.
There are no churches left in Afghanistan.
Between half a million and a million
Christians have left Iraq. At the beginning of the 19th century Christians
represented 20 per cent of the population of the Arab world, today two per
cent. This is a story that is crying out for a public voice, and I have not
heard an adequate public voice.
Being
Jewish and having experienced the trauma of persecution and genocide, Sacks
said, “you cannot but feel this very deeply and personally.”
And the list goes on. Eylon
Aslan-Levy has written in support of the Middle East’s
beleaguered religious minorities in London’s Jewish Chronicle,
calling on Jews to donate to charities devoted to assisting them. During the
fighting in Gaza, Canada’s Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs marched in solidarity with Middle Eastern
Christians. And Israel itself has quietly been
helping refugees fleeing through Jordan and Syria.
The
takeaway from all this should be clear: Whether or not one thinks Cruz was
justified in his walkout, the tempest in the tea party over his actions must
not be allowed to obscure the pressing plight of Christians in the birthplace
of their faith, and our Jewish obligation to stand in solidarity with them.
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