4 days ago
Minorities in the Middle East are facing extinction
Father Tony Boutros is a Catholic priest in Sweida, southern Syria. He is no stranger to ethnic unrest; in 2015, he was kidnapped during a spate of abductions of Christians in the country.
The clergyman survived that brush with death. But he may not be so fortunate next time. This week, he recorded a message begging the international community for help.
'We ask the US, Europe, the Vatican, and the whole world for international protection for this region of Sweida, all of it, for us and for our Druze brothers, my dear ones,' he said. 'Look at the massacres that happened to us in Sweida.'
As he spoke, hundreds of Druze civilians, including women and children, were being kidnapped, tortured, executed and mutilated, with Christians suffering at their side. They fought back but there were fears of genocide.
The Syrian Bedouin, who had started the onslaught, were soon backed by forces from Damascus, who joined the violence despite being ostensibly sent to quell it.
Before long, Sweida was a magnet for every Sunni tribe in the region, with thousands of militiamen brandishing Kalashnikovs and knives streaming south on motorcycles, in cars and in buses.
'Your fight isn't just with Syrians, it's with the entire Muslim world,' one masked jihadi said in a chilling video. 'We'll hunt you down wherever you are, just like the Jews.'
The world ignored the priest's desperate pleas. Apart from Jerusalem. This week, Israel Defense Forces jets pushed the murderous mob back for the sake of its own security – Sweida is 45 miles from Israel – as well as that of the Druze. It also provided large quantities of humanitarian aid.
This stemmed the tide, though appallingly not for long. The violence continues. Israel, you say? Israel? So it was that the UN secretary-general demanded 'an immediate cessation of all violations of Syria's sovereignty', while the EU urged Jerusalem to 'immediately cease its strikes'. God knows what Father Boutros made of that.
This was just the latest round of ethnic bloodshed to have ravaged Syria since Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the former Islamic State and al-Qaeda terrorist, toppled Assad in December with support from Turkey.
He has been bafflingly fêted by the West. There was inexplicable appearance on Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell's podcast The Rest is Politics, not to mention visits from world leaders and sanctions relief.
Under Jolani's rule, Alawites and Christians have been massacred in sadistic scenes that have often been captured on social media. One video showed the corpse of a vintner being trampled face-down in his own wine by the soldiers of Allah in March.
Was the old jihadi powerless to stop his men? Or had he little desire to do so? This time it was the turn of the Druze. Numbering up to a million, they adhere to a mystical faith that believes both in the God of Abraham and reincarnation. About 150,000 reside in Israel and are counted among its most doughty soldiers. Others live across the Levant. That such an obscure people roused little global sympathy is predictable. After all, they were not being menaced by the Israelis, so who cares?
From a Jewish perspective, however, and perhaps a Muslim one, it is hard to understand the lack of concern in the Christian West for Christians in the Middle East.
A century ago, they comprised 20 per cent of the population of the region. After decades of bloody persecution, that number stands at under three per cent. Not a single placard has been raised. For a country embarrassed by its religious heritage, all of this is a bit awkward for us, I suppose. Anyway, back to Gaza.
