Hamas and Hezbollah Attacks on Christians Being Ignored

While the Pope, without the slightest evidence, recently accused Israel of killing two Palestinian Christian women at a Catholic church in Gaza, both he, and most of the world’s media that seconded his sentiments, have again showed an anti-Israel animus, always quick to blame Israel, in marked contrast to how studiously they ignore the continuing attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah on Christians. More on this double standard can be found here: “Why Christian Leaders Ignore Attacks on Their Community,” by Bassam Tawil, Gatestone Institute, January 2, 2024:

On December 26, Iran’s Lebanese terror proxy Hezbollah attacked St. Mary’s Greek Catholic Church in Iqrit, northern Israel. An anti-tank guided missile fired from Lebanon directly hit the church, severely wounding an 85-year-old civilian. Nine Israeli soldiers who rushed to rescue the churchgoer were then wounded by a second missile strike. Hezbollah boasted about the attack and posted a video of its missiles hitting the church.

The attack by Hezbollah on St. Mary’s Church in northern Israel was deliberate. Hezbollah was proud of its attack both on the church, and on the IDF soldiers wounded by a second missile from Hezbollah when they rushed to rescue an elderly civilian, presumably a Christian, at the site of the church.

As of this writing, no Christian leader has had anything to say about Hezbollah’s missile attack on a church.

Why didn’t the Pope mention the deliberate attack on a Catholic church by Hezbollah? Was he worried about angering the terror group, that might then take out its anger on the Lebanese Christians? Or is it simply that the Vatican cares only to comment and condemn when it thinks that Israel is involved?

The attack did not elicit any response from any major Christian organization in the West. By contrast, the Pope was quick to denounce the killing of two Christian women in the Gaza Strip, falsely insinuating, however, that Israel was responsible.

Nahida Khalil Anton and her daughter, Samar Kamal Anton, were reportedly killed in a shooting incident at the compound of the Holy Family Catholic Parish in the Gaza Strip. The Pope claimed that the two women “were killed, and others were wounded by the shooters while they were going to the bathroom.” Although he did not name the alleged shooters, the Pope, in the article, echoing false claims by Hamas and other terrorist groups, was clearly pointing the finger of blame at Israel:

“At the Angelus prayer, the Pope said he continues to receive troubling news from Gaza, where unarmed civilians are the targets of bombings and gunfire.”

The IDF, having investigated the incident at the Holy Family Catholic Parish, has categorically denied having been responsible for the killing of the two Christian women. Despite the Pope’s claim, no “unarmed civilians” are the targets of Israeli bombing and gunfire. Israel targets Hamas, and civilian casualties are the unavoidable result when Hamas weapons, rocket launchers, and combatants are deliberately placed in and among civilians. Israel makes great efforts to avoid civilian casualties; Hamas, on the other hand, does everything it can to put civilians in harm’s way, counting on their deaths to make the IDF look bad and increasing international pressure on Israel to stop its war against the terror group.

Hamas is an Islamic terror group that in Gaza has subjected the tiny Christian community to persecution, leading many Christians to leave the Strip. In 2005, when Israel pulled out of Gaza, there were 5,000 Christians. Now, after Hamas’ 18 years of rule, there are fewer than 1,000 Christians left in Gaza. Of course, Hamas would happily kill a few Christians in Gaza if the killing could then be blamed on the IDF. But why did the Pope so readily accept Hamas’ version, blaming the IDF for the Christian women’s deaths, and not waiting for the results of the IDF’s own investigation?

Muslims commit such crimes against Christians in the Gaza Strip, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and other countries, no one, including the Western media, takes notice. Why? It is not about Israel. No Jews are at fault.

Where are the stories in the Western media about the Muslim mistreatment of the Christian Copts in Egypt, the Muslim attacks on Maronites in Lebanon, the Sunni and Shi’a persecutors of Christians in Iraq, the killings by Muslim fanatics of Christians in Algeria? A handful, here and there, do appear, but only rarely in mainstream publications.

It is just as likely that the Christian women [at the Holy Family Parish Catholic Church in Gaza] were killed by Hamas or Islamic Jihad terrorists. In recent years, there has been increased evidence that Hamas not only uses mosques to launch attacks against Israel; Archbishop Alexis, a prominent Christian leader in the Gaza Strip, revealed that during one of the recent rounds of fighting, Hamas terrorists used the church compound to launch rockets into Israel.

Why didn’t the Pope speak out about Hamas using the church compound in Gaza to launch rocket attacks against Israel, thereby endangering churchgoers and the church building itself? The Pope only speaks about Christians in the Middle East when he can condemn Israel, remaining silent on the attacks carried out by Hamas and Hezbollah on both Christians and on churches. He has uncritically accepted Hamas’ attempt to blame Israel for attacks, such as that in which the Antons, mother and daughter, were killed, an attack that Hamas itself carried out.

These are the same terrorists, by the way, who fired a rocket that struck a hospital in the Gaza Strip and rushed to falsely accuse Israel. After examining images of the damage at the point of impact at the Al-Ahli Hospital, a European military source ruled out the hypothesis that the attack was an air-to-ground strike by an Israeli fighter jet. The source, as well as the US government, assessed that the explosion was caused by a Gazan rocket that had misfired on its way toward Israel. The source, in addition, questioned the death toll quickly announced by the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, saying it was unlikely that 471 people died in the explosion; US intelligence estimated far fewer.

Earlier, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem had directly accused Israel, without any evidence, of killing the Christian mother and daughter. “They were shot in cold blood,” the patriarchate claimed in a statement….

By pointing an accusatory finger at Israel, the Pope and the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem are actually buying into the false claims made by Iran’s Palestinian proxy, Hamas. The Pope and the patriarchate were quick to make a judgement against Israel, largely on the basis of a false claim made by Hamas, whose terrorists invaded Israel on October 7 and murdered more than 1,200 Israelis and wounded thousands of others. The Pope and the patriarchate did not even bother to wait for the Israeli army’s investigation into the Gaza church incident. Instead, they, like many in the mainstream media in the West, chose to parrot the false claims made by Hamas and other terrorists.

Why didn’t the Pope and the Latin Patriarchate wait for the results of the IDF’s investigation into the Gaza church incident? Why the insensate rush to repeat Hamas’ claims and accuse the IDF of the killings, when Hamas has been found repeatedly to lie? We should all remember Hamas’ charge about a “massacre in Jenin” of “500 civilians” by the IDF, that turned out to be a battle, in which 52 Hamas combatants, not 500 Palestinian civilians, were killed. During the current war, it is worth repeating, Hamas accused Israel of an airstrike on the Al-Ahli Hospital, that supposedly killed 500 civilians. It turned out that there had been no Israeli airstrike. Instead, a rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad had misfired, and fell to earth inside Gaza, on not on the hospital itself, but on the parking lot next to the hospital. And instead of “500 people killed,” Western intelligence services confirmed that “from 10 to 50” people died. With that record of lies — and there are many more such examples — why should the Pope have believed the claims made by Hamas?

Like many in the mainstream media in the West, they [the Pope and the Latin patriarch in Jerusalem] also chose to ignore the Hezbollah attack on the church in northern Israel. They probably see no reason why they should respond to an attack that cannot be blamed on Israel.

Where were the Pope and other Christian organizations, one wonders, when Christians living under the terrorist group Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, were being systematically targeted and persecuted?…

The persecution of Gazan Christians by Hamas is what led to an 80% decline in the number of Christians, from 5,000 to 1,000, between 2005 and today. Yet in all that time, neither the Vatican, nor the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, uttered a syllable of protest at the mistreatment of Christians by Hamas. They no doubt believed that any protest would simply anger Hamas further, and lead to still greater persecution of the Christians in Gaza. But is that calculation correct? By never criticizing Hamas, the Pope leaves the Christians in Gaza without a champion. The Vatican might at least have tried, quietly, to protest the condition of the Christians in the Strip; Hamas, just as quietly, might have responded by promising to ease up on its mistreatment of Christians, in order to head off a public rebuke from the Pope. Why should the Papacy not have given it a try, instead of currying Hamas’ favor by blaming Israel for attacks on Christians it had nothing to do with?

Hamas has enacted policies that are turning the [Palestinian-controlled areas] into an Islamic theocracy, and the Christian religion and its followers are consistently discriminated against. Muslim groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad have built a culture of hatred upon the age-old foundations of Islamic society. In 2008, Muslim militants bombed the Gaza City Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and a bomb went off in a Christian school.”

These bomb attacks at both the YMCA and a Christian school in Gaza were attempts to terrorize the last remnant of Christians in Gaza to leave the Strip. And the terrorism is working.; most of the Christians now recognize that “we have no future in Gaza.”

In [Justus Reid] Weiner’s view, the crimes committed against Christian Arabs result from a way of thinking that dates back to the earliest days of Islam:

“Traditionally, Christians and Jews are given an inferior social status known as dhimmitude in Islam. The dhimma is a legal contract of submission that was imposed upon the indigenous non-Muslim populations in regions conquered by the spread of Islam. Although Jews and Christians were not forced to convert to Islam, they were not treated as the equals of Muslims. As dhimmis, Jews and Christians were subjected to both legal and cultural restrictions under Islamic law. For example, Muslims could rise horses, whereas Christians and Jews were limited to donkeys. Or, Muslims were permitted to wear garments of fine cloth, while Christians and Jews were only allowed to wear clothing made from coarse fabric.”

Being made to ride donkeys instead of horses, and to wear coarse fabrics, are the least of the disabilities that dhimmis — Christians and Jews living in a Muslim polity — endured. Worst of all was the payment of the jizyah, a burdensome capitation tax paid to the Islamic state by non-Muslims, in order to guarantee their physical safety. In other words, payment of the jizyah was a form of extortion. It’s strange that Justus Reid Weiner failed to mention the jizyah in his description of dhimmitude.

Weiner went on to note:

“In Palestinian society Christian Arabs have no voice and no protection. It is no wonder they have been leaving. Because of emigration – some of its dating back two or three generations – seventy percent of Christian Arabs who originally resided in the West Bank and Gaza now live abroad.”

“How ironic, then, that the latest attempt to label Israel as a country that targets Christians coincided with the massacre in Nigeria perpetrated against Christians celebrating Christmas. More than 160 Christians were murdered in coordinated attacks by Islamist militant groups that took place between December 23-25. Nigeria has been a hotbed for Christian persecution in recent years, with the country, in 2022, leading the world in Christians killed for their faith. When such atrocities are committed, we rarely hear the voices of those who claim to care about the well-being and safety of Christians around the world.

Why have so few Christians spoken out about the continuing mass killings — an attempted genocide — of Nigerian Christians at the hands of the Muslim terrorists of Boko Haram? What are they afraid of? It can’t be a fear of causing even more murders of Christians. Boko Haram is murdering Christians just as fast as it can. Nigerian Christians are already being murdered practically every day by the Muslim terrorists of Boko Haram and desperately want support from Christians outside Nigeria that so far they have not been getting. Ideally, they should be supplied with the military means needed to defend themselves against Boko Haram, or even to establish a separate Christian polity carved out of southern Nigeria, similar to the state of Biafra that the Christian Ibos tried but failed to establish during the Biafra War between 1967 and 1969. This may be the only way to allow the Nigerian Christians to survive, with Western weapons, against the constant aggressions of Boko Haram and its Muslim supporters in the Nigerian government and army.

The top 10 state persecutors of Christians, according to Open Doors, an organization that supports persecuted Christians, are North Korea, Somalia, Yemen, Eritrea, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Sudan. Other notable countries who made the list include India, China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Egypt, Mexico, Turkey and Nicaragua.

Nine of the ten “top” state persecutors of Christians are Muslim states. Clearly, there is something in the Qur’an that teaches Muslims to hate and fear Christians; there are dozens of verses calling for war against the Infidels, until they are killed, or converted, or subdued as dhimmis. We should remind ourselves that the Qur’an teaches Muslims that while they are the “best of peoples,” the non-Muslims, per contra, are “the most vile of creating beings.” Such teachings, inculcated from childhood, have their intended effect.

In Israel, meanwhile, the Christian community grew by 1.4 percent in 2020 and numbered some 182,000 people. Eighty-four percent of the Christians said they were satisfied with life in Israel: 24% said they were “very satisfied” and 60% “satisfied.” Israel is one of the few countries in the Middle East where Christians feel secure and where their numbers are growing. By contrast, in 2022 about 1,100 Christians lived in the Gaza Strip — down from more than 1,300 in 2014….

The Pope, and other Christian leaders, ought to realize that their failure to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah for their attacks on Christians has not led to any amelioration in the condition of Christians in Gaza or in Lebanon. And in attacking Israel unjustly, they are damaging the one state in the Middle East where Christians feel secure, where their numbers are rising, and where 84% of them declare that they are “satisfied” with life in Israel, with 24% declaring themselves “very satisfied.” Yet many Christian leaders still take no note of how well Christians have it in the Jewish state, but continue to baselessly attack Israel for the crimes committed by both Hamas and Hezbollah on Christians and on the churches where they worship. No good can come of this.