Will Christianity’s over 2,000 years in the Middle East come to end during our lifetimes?

1. Will Christianity’s over 2,000 years in the Middle East come to end during our lifetimes?

That’s the question Christian persecution in the region asks. Today In Defense of Christians is sponsoring a Day of Action today in solidarity with Persecuted Christians in the Middle East, with an emphasis on prayer, speaking up, and charity: “As Christians across the Middle East continue to face ongoing persecution and death, including the recent beheading of 21 Egyptian Copts and emerging news of a mass kidnapping of Christians in Syria, IDC calls on friends and colleagues nationwide to join a Day of Action on February 25, 2015. IDC encourages Christians of all denominations, members of all faith traditions, and all people of goodwill to unite in prayer, political advocacy, and charitable giving. Working in solidarity, we can more effectively champion the cause of Middle Eastern Christianity.

“First, participants are invited to mark February 25 as a special day of prayer and sacrifice. IDC is providing resources for raising awareness in local communities across America. “Second, participants are empowered to engage in political advocacy. IDC is coordinating outreach to the State Department, Congressional Representatives, and the White House, asking for accountability and commitment from our national leaders. “Third, participants are directed to charitable organizations delivering humanitarian aid to Christians, as well as to other religious minorities, in an attempt to accelerate desperately needed relief to the region’s refugees. “IDC hopes that the Day of Action will mobilize communities across the nation, including the American Diaspora, to stand with Middle East Christians. The campaign is designed to elevate the appeals of citizens so that Washington will hear their concerns. During these harsh winter months, urgent action is needed. IDC is confident that Americans are ready to give voice to the voiceless Christians of the Middle East.” To learn more about the Day of Action, visit IDC’s website here — or visit IDC on Facebook.

2. John Burger writes: [Father Andrzej Halemba, head of Aid in the Church in Need’s Middle East section] heard stories from several people working on the ground, including a nun who told him that in a village near Hassake, the area where the Christian civilians were kidnapped Monday, a group of jihadists came into town on motorcycles and ordered the women to stay home and not to go outside. “And they pulled down all the crosses and said, ‘You should obey Sharia,’ and ‘We’re coming back.’

So the Christians were saying ‘We have to protect ourselves,’ and they sent the women and girls away and took weapons and said they would fight. But what kind of fight? They can’t do much against ISIS jihadists.”

Adding to the problem is the fact that many Christians in Syria fear being targeted by extremist groups even in refugee camps, so they avoid going there and registering and thus have so far benefited only to a limited extent from relief provided by the UN and other large, secular NGOs. Instead, they tend to go to their parishes and the charities of the local Church. Aid to the Church in Need will fund a number of projects to help Christian communities in Aleppo, Homs, Damascus and other cities and villages that have been hard hit by the war. The charity will help provide 4500 vulnerable families with funds to purchase oil, gas electricity and to pay their rent for four months; ensure a supply of medical supplies for communities in Aleppo and Hassake for six months; pay for repairs and fuel costs at half a dozen schools in Aleppo and Damascus, and support local Churches in the repair of badly damaged or destroyed infrastructure, including churches, catechetical centers, and diocesan offices.

Archbishop Jeanbart’s dream project is to establish a “Solidarity Fund” to help Christians rebuild their livelihoods, start businesses, and get training. He says it’s his duty to try to keep Christians in Syria. “It’s important for the Church universal to maintain the presence of the Church in Syria,” he said from his war-ravaged city. “We are the sons of the first missions. The first Christians baptized by the Apostles included many Jews from Syria who would go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem at Pentecost…. So we have a responsibility to do what we can to maintain the presence of the Church where it was born.”

3. Bryan Grim, an expert on religious liberty around the world, formerly of Pew, in an interview: Grim recounts an episode from his college years at the height of U.S.-Iran tensions in the 1970s. To curb anti-Iran sentiments inflaming the university community, he and friends in campus ministry distributed flyers citing Scripture and inviting students to love their Iranian neighbors. Their efforts were met with anger and insults. Grim says the moment was a pivotal one for him, making him realize “the most radical thing in the world is love.” Speaking of the disturbing numbers of young Muslims turning to an extremist form of Islam, Grim says his work is increasingly geared to raising awareness about “radical love.” “If you want to counter radicalization,” he says, “what more radical way to do it than caring about your neighbor?”

4. Cardinal Timothy Dolan talked with Msgr. John Kozar of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association on his weekly radio show on the Catholic Channel on Sirius XM. Msgr. Kozar commented that a beheading used to get people’s attention. We’ve been through so many of them though now, and especially with ISIS – it is its propaganda of choice. “People are so fatigued… They want to move on… even to the point of saying ‘let them kill each other,’” Msgr. Kozar observed. Those of us who are Christian, in a particular way: We’re going to have to answer for these kinds of attitudes. He also warned against a “hit and run” approach to the persecuted and the region. And asked for honesty: There is a religious persecution going on by religious extremists, on a religious minority. Finally, he pointed to the faith of Christians under persecution – the courage that keeps them moving forward in hope. (I’m reminded of some of the stories of the families of the 21 Copts martyred I tried to highlight in my latest syndicated column.)

5. They call them “crusaders”; keeping an eye on ISIS’s latest kidnapping, of women and children from Syria.

6. The Daily Signal highlights some of the best of America here: Zarephath Health Center, where Drs. Alieta and John Eck see patients enrolled in Medicaid or without insurance. And the husband-and-wife team do it for free. “It’s a godsend,” Davide told The Daily Signal. “When you don’t have insurance—they’ve been very helpful. I always say, ‘God bless these people,’ because they’re so nice.” The brainchild of John and Alieta Eck, the Zarephath Health Center opened in Somerset in 2003 as a way to serve low-income patients needing medical care. But their clinic differed from others already in existence: contrary to programs like Medicaid that serve low-income Americans, it wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime. The building the clinic calls home was given to them by the Zarephath Christian Church, and donations from the community help keep the lights on. Because there is little overhead and the doctors volunteer for free, John and Alieta Eck are able to keep their patient costs low at just $13 per patient. “The people who are sick and have no funds would go to a clinic, which is what it used to be way before we had big government programs,” Alieta Eck said in an interview with The Daily Signal. “We’ll take care of them. It’s in our DNA. That’s why we went to medical school, to care for people and not to be so worried about whether they can pay us or not.”

7. Michael New further remembers John Wilke. Lila Rose, founder of Live Action confirms my memory from an interview long ago: “His book “A handbook on abortion” (which I found on a shelf in my parent’s study) was the book that inspired me at age 9 to care about the preborn.” Matt Swaim will dedicate an hour of his Cincinnati morning radio show tomorrow to celebrating Dr. Wilke’s life. (You can listen online from anywhere.)

8. “Here’s my response to the ever-present implied rhetorical non-question about how to mother seven children.”

9. RFI: The Mont Saint Michel island off the Normandy coast was completely cut off from mainland France on Wednesday evening for the first time for 184 years. (Drone video at link.)

10. I guess this is one way to combat a disposable culture? Or be tempted to wonder if we’re beyond help?

who’s fault is that? Current president was hell bent on destroying everything that was accomplished and he succeeded in doing just that by not only pulling troops out, but announcing he was going to long before he actually did- Taliban simply went into hiding till we left- and now we are seeing the disastrous results of an inept president’s handling of the war- a president who naively things that ‘being nice’ to the enemy will win their hearts and souls- either that or he is ACTIVELY AIDING and ABBETTING the enemy by making things very easy for them- What else can explain his letting prisoners of war go so they can go back and murder more American soldiers? Sure Bush let some go as well however, they were NOT high level officers in the terrorist faction like the recent released prisoners were- Also, what else can explain his lifting sanctions on Iran? What else can explain his failure to act to save Coptic Christians?

President Bush and ALL of congress heard the cries from those Iraqi refugees- and they responded- many people think we went to war simply because Bush wanted a war- or simply because there were WMD’s (which EVERY memember of congress was convinced- via intel reports from all over the world, existed- and quite frankly HAVe been found, and WERE witnessed y our troops o nthe field)-

Saddam had repeatedly violated international laws against peacetime airspace, firing on, and killing our men and women in the forces- We gave him several chances to comply with un regulations and he refused- He also kept directly threatening us, and there was intel at the time of the tower attacks that the terrorists were aligned with Saddam-

We also went to war- per approval of EVERY member of congress- to stop a genocidal maniac that was the modern day hitler of our times- The world turned it’s back on such a brutal dictator once before, and millions of people were exterminated- until we finally recognized and reacted to the the horrors and stepped in to stop it-

Every member of congress heard and saw photos of the brutality that Saddam was doing against his own people- and when Saddam went in and used WMD on his own people, killing more than 10,000 of his own people- there was no longer any question that he had to be taken out- He was violating UN laws- He was committing mass atrocities, he was using WMD’s against his own people, He was murdering our soldiers long before we ever declared war on him- He had every opportunity to stop, but he thumbed his nose at us and continued right on with his psychotic and dangerous actions- He was repeatedly and directly threatening us, and based on his actions, and based on what had just happened to us Sept 11, it was very clear that saddam was in the process of carrying out his threats—

A miscalculation of such magnitude simply boggles the mind. This was not a secret conspiracy plotted in the shadowy caves of Afghanistan. To the contrary, Saddam Hussein had broadcast his ambitions and his intentions to the whole world. He amassed tens of thousands of men and hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of military equipment on Kuwait’s border in full view of U.S. spy satellites and Western news reporters. Yet so few believed him. Why? How could people so smart, so well versed in ancient and modern history, and so well informed by the best classified intelligence money can buy have so badly misread the situation?

Again, the answer lies not in the failure of inteligence gathering per se but a failure of imagination. The experts simply refused to believe that Saddam was so evil that he would order the rape and pillaging of an Arab neighbor. They refused to believe that he was so evil that he would launch thirty-nine Scud missiles against Israel, and more Scuds against Saudi Arabia. What’s more, they refused to believe Saddam when he described himself as a “modern Nebuchadnezzar,” one of the most evil tyrants ever described in the Bible. And therin lies the problem.

Too many in Washington today have a modern, Western, secular mind-set that either discounts – or outright dismisses – the fact that evil is a real and active force in history. They insist on interpreting events only through the lenses of politics and economics. Yet to misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it, and that is precisely what happened on August 2, 1990, and September 11, 2001. Washington was blindsided by an evil it did not understand, just as it had been blindsided by Auschwitz, Dachau, and Pearl Harbor, and much as I believe it will be blindsided by future events (pp. 46-77).

Joel Rosenberg

You should read through this fella’s blog- Saddam HAD to go- there was no question about it- The evil that he did, and was threatening to do was so overwhelming that no compassionate person could close their eyes to it

https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/iraq-war-justified-lessons-from-saddams-history-part-1/

Saddam’s oldest son, Uday, as commander of the Fedayeen Saddam, publicly beheaded more than 200 women throughout the country. The Iraqi Government systematically used rape and the sexual assault of women to extract information and force confessions from detained family members; to intimidate Iraqi opposition members by sending videotapes showing the rape of female family members; and to blackmail Iraqi men into future cooperation with the regime. Some Iraqi authorities even carried government personnel cards identifying their official “activity” as the “violation of women’s honor” – literally a license to rape in the name of “official business.” In addition to systematic and repeated acts of rape, women in Saddam’s jails were subjected to tortures such as brutal beatings, electrical shocks, and branding. And the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women reported that more than 4,000 women have been victims of so-called “honor killings” just since Article 111 went into effect in 1990.

I “googled” the keywords ‘Iraq, mass graves, rape, torture, Hussein‘ (without commas or quotes), and was frankly stunned by the content found in links appearing at the top of the list. Some of the articles literally trivialized Saddam Hussein’s brutality, and fixated instead on the abuses of the U.S. detention facility known as Abu Ghraib. The idea was to make the United States under President Bush as evil as Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Now, please don’t get me wrong; the abuses of Iraqi detainees under U.S. custody were despicable. But in the overwhelming number of cases, these abuse involved psychological humiliation rather than genuine physical torture. No one was discovered to have been slowly lowered into barrels of acid, or to have had holes drilled into their heads with power drills.

Since the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown in May, 270 mass graves have been reported. By mid-January, 2004, the number of confirmed sites climbed to fifty-three. Some graves hold a few dozen bodies—their arms lashed together and the bullet holes in the backs of skulls testimony to their execution. Other graves go on for hundreds of meters, densely packed with thousands of bodies.

“We’ve already discovered just so far the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves,” said British Prime Minister Tony Blair on November 20 in London. The United Nations, the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) all estimate that Saddam Hussein’s regime murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people. “Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 290,000 Iraqis have been ‘disappeared’ by the Iraqi government over the past two decades,” said the group in a statement in May. “Many of these ‘disappeared’ are those whose remains are now being unearthed in mass graves all over Iraq.”

If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot’s Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.

WMD’s (Which people claim ‘didn’t exist)

The following information is found under the section titled, ” Iraq’s Biological Weapons (BW) Program“:

Between 1991 and 1998, UN inspectors conducted more than 70 inspections into Iraq’s biological warfare activities. In its 1999 final report to the U.N. Security Council, UNSCOM noted that Iraq’s biological warfare program was “among the most secretive of its programs of weapons of mass destruction.” It said that Iraq “took active steps” to conceal the program, including “inadequate disclosures, unilateral destruction, and concealment activities.” Therefore, the Commission concluded, “it has not been possible to verify” Iraq’s statements about the extent and nature of its biological weapons program.”

A 58 page annex to the final report describes what the Commission was able to learn about the BW program, despite Iraq’s concealment activities, and documents discrepancies between what Iraq claimed to have developed, or destroyed, and the physical evidence. Some of the findings include:

* Extensive BW program: Iraq had an extensive BW program from 1973 until at least 1991. In mid-1995, Iraq admitted that it had weaponized BW agents, but claimed that the entire BW program had been in “obliterated” in 1991 and that all BW weapons had been destroyed and all bulk BW agents had been deactivated. The Commission found, however, that the evidence produced in support of this claim was not credible, and that Iraq “retained suitable growth media, BW facilities, production equipment, teams of expert personnel, and the essential technical knowledge” after 1991.

* Bulk production: In July, 1995, Iraq acknowledged that between 1988 and 1991, it had produced two BW agents in bulk: botulinum toxin and Bacillus anthracis spores (anthrax). Iraq reported 19,180 liters of botulinum toxin (10-20 fold concentrated) and 8445 liters of Bacillus anthracis spores (10 fold concentrated). UNSCOM found, however, that “bulk warfare agent production appears to be considerably understated,” given the resources available to Iraq’s BW program, including growth media and fermenter capacity. The Commission said that the production rate of Botulinum toxin could be as much as double the stated amount, and 3 times greater than that stated for Bacillus anthracis spores.Iraq claimed that it unilaterally destroyed more than 7500 liters of the Botulinum toxin and 3412 liters of Bacillus anthracis spores in 1991; UNSCOM noted that there was not evidence to support quantities claimed to be destroyed. The report concludes “the Commission has no confidence that all bulk agents have been destroyed… and that a BW capability does not exist in Iraq.”Iraq also claims to have produced lesser quantities of clostridium perfringens spores, ricin, and wheat cover smut.

* BW Warheads: Iraq claimed to have produced 25 Al-Hussein missile warheads and filled them with BW agents. The Commission found that there was no credible evidence to show that only 25 missiles were produced and filled. Iraq declared that the 25 missiles were unilaterally destroyed; the Commission found enough physical evidence to account for the declared quantities of BW warheads, but the location of the remnants were inconsistent with Iraq’s story.

* BW bombs: Iraq declared that 200 R-400 aerial bombs were manufactured for BW purposes, but acknowledged that the numbers of bombs filled with particular agents (100 with botulinum toxin, 50 with bacillus anthracis spores, and 7 with aflatoxin) were “guesses.” UNSCOM did find evidence of the destruction of some BW bombs at the site declared by Iraq, but found that the remnants account for less than one third of the bombs Iraq claims to have destroyed. In addition, UNSCOM found evidence of R-400A bombs carrying BW at an airfield where no BW weapons were declared.

* Aircraft drop tanks: Iraq claimed that it produced 4 aircraft drop tanks to disseminate BW agents, and was developing a pilotless aircraft that could carry the tanks, holding either BW or chemical weapons, and release the toxins at a preset time. UNSCOM found that there was no evidence corroborate that only 4 were produced, and noted that interviews indicated that 12 were planned. Remnants of only three destroyed tanks were recovered. UNSCOM also rejected the evidence offered by Iraq–a letter thanking the project workers–that the pilotless aircraft project was shut down.

* Aerosol Generators: Iraq developed aerosol generators for the dispersal of BW agents by modifying helicopter-borne commercial chemical insecticide disseminators. Although Iraq claimed the devices were ineffective, UNSCOM received documentation that they were successfully field tested. Interview evidence suggests that there were 12 devices produced; none were destroyed by UNSCOM.

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