Gatestone Institute

At a time when Christians throughout the Muslim world are suffering from a variety of persecution, the plight of Palestinian Christians is seldom heard.

It exists. Open Doors, a human rights group that follows the persecution of Christians, notes that Palestinian Christians suffer from a “high” level of persecution, the source of which is, in its words, “Islamic Oppression”:

Those who convert to Christianity from Islam, however, face the worst Christian persecution and it is difficult for them to safely participate in existing churches. In the West Bank they are threatened and put under great pressure, in Gaza their situation is so dangerous that they live their Christian faith in utmost secrecy….The influence of radical Islamic ideology is rising, and historical churches have to be diplomatic in their approach towards Muslims.

That said, while reports of the persecution of Christians emanate regularly from other Muslim majority regions around the world—Asian Pakistan, Arab Egypt, and African Nigeria as three regional examples—little is mentioned of those Christians living under the Palestinian Authority.

Why is that? Is it because they experience significantly less persecution than their coreligionists around the Muslim world? Or is it because of their unique situation—living in a hotly contested arena with much political and media wrangling in the balance?

“The Persecution of Christians in the Palestinian Authority,” a new report by Dr. Edy Cohen, published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies on May 27, goes a long way in answering these questions.

First, it documents three recent anecdotes of persecution of Christians, none of which was reported by the so-called “mainstream media.”

On April 25, “the terrified residents of the Christian village of Jifna near Ramallah … were attacked by Muslim gunmen … after a woman from the village submitted a complaint to the police that the son of a prominent, Fatah-affiliated leader had attacked her family. In response, dozens of Fatah gunmen came to the village, fired hundreds of bullets in the air, threw petrol bombs while shouting curses, and caused severe damage to public property. It was a miracle that there were no dead or wounded.”

Shortly over two weeks later, during the night of May 13, “[v]andals broke into a church of the Maronite community in the center of Bethlehem, desecrated it, and stole expensive equipment belonging to the church, including the security cameras…. [T]his is the sixth time the Maronite church in Bethlehem has been subjected to acts of vandalism and theft, including an arson attack in 2015 that caused considerable damage and forced the church to close for a lengthy period.”

Three days later, on May 16, “it was the turn of the Anglican church in the village of Aboud, west of Ramallah. Vandals cut through the fence, broke the windows of the church, and broke in. They desecrated it, looked for valuable items, and stole a great deal of equipment.”

These three attacks, which occurred in the span of three weeks, fit the same pattern of abuse that Christians in other Muslim majority regions habitually experience. While the desecration and plundering of churches is prevalent, so too are Muslim mob risings against Christian minorities, whenever the latter—perceived as dhimmis, or third-class “citizens” who are expected to be grateful they are tolerated at all—dare speak up for their rights, as occurred the Christian village of Jifna on April 25:

“[T]he rioters” in Jifna, the report relates, “called on the [Christian] residents to pay jizya—a head tax that was levied throughout history on non-Muslim minorities under Islamic rule. The most recent victims of the jizya were the Christian communities of Iraq and Syria under ISIS rule.”

Moreover, as often happens when Muslims attack Christians in Islamic nations, “Despite the [Christian] residents’ cries for help” in Jifna, “the PA police did not intervene during the hours of mayhem. They have not arrested any suspects.” Similarly, “no suspects were arrested” in the two church attacks.

In short, Palestinian Christians are suffering from the same patterns of persecution—including church attacks, kidnappings and forced conversion—that their coreligionists suffer in dozens of other Muslim nations. The difference, however, is that the persecution of Palestinian Christians has “received no coverage in the Palestinian media. In fact,” Cohan explains, “a full gag order was imposed in many cases”:

The only thing that interests the PA is that events of this kind not be leaked to the media. Fatah regularly exerts heavy pressure on Christians not to report the acts of violence and vandalism from which they frequently suffer, as such publicity could damage the PA’s image as an actor capable of protecting the lives and property of the Christian minority under its rule. Even less does the PA want to be depicted as a radical entity that persecutes religious minorities. That image could have negative repercussions for the massive international, and particularly European, aid the PA receives.

Considered another way, the bread and butter of the PA and its supporters, media and others, is to portray the Palestinians as victims of unjust aggression and discrimination from Israel. This narrative would be jeopardized if the international community learned that Palestinians themselves are persecuting fellow Palestinians—solely on account of religion. It might be hard to muster sympathy for a supposedly oppressed people when one realizes that they themselves are doing the oppressing of the minorities in their midst.

So sensitive to this potential difficulty, “PA officials exert pressure on local Christian to not report such incidents, which threaten to unmask the Palestinian Authority as yet another Middle East regime beholden to a radical Islamic ideology,” Cohen states elsewhere:

Far more important to the Palestinian Authority than arresting those who assault Christian sites is keeping such incidents out of the mainstream media. And they are very successful in this regard. Indeed, only a handful of smaller local outlets bothered to report on these latest break-ins. The mainstream international media ignored them altogether.

Notably, a similar dynamic exists concerning Muslim refugees. Although West European politicians and media present them as persecuted and oppressed, in need of a welcoming hand, Muslim migrants themselves sometimes persecute and oppress Christian minorities among them—including by terrorizing them in refugee camps and drowning them in the Mediterranean.

The sad and simple fact, by all counts, is that Christianity is on the verge of disappearing in the place of its birth, including Bethlehem. As Justus Reid Weiner, a lawyer and scholar well acquainted with the region, explains, “The systematic persecution of Christian Arabs living in Palestinian areas is being met with nearly total silence by the international community, human rights activists, the media and NGOs… In a society where Arab Christians have no voice and no protection it is no surprise that they are leaving.”

Note: The following report by Ryan Ledendecker appeared on the Western Journal's Conservative Tribune on June 15. It also has a poll asking readers if the War College should have caved in to CAIR or not (in a red box half way through the article here). An earlier report titled "US Army War College Drops Speech by Terror Expert, CAIR Cites ‘Anti-Muslim Racism’" also appeared on the Western Journal on June 13.

The Muslim community successfully got the U.S. Army War College to postpone bringing a speaker to campus that a Muslim’s rights group claimed is an “islamophobe.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations had its Philadelphia chapter pressure the school into stopping this event from taking place, according to the Washington Times.

And, unfortunately, it worked — the event was kicked to the curb.

Raymond Ibrahim, the man in question, is an expert in the long history of Islamic terrorismacross the globe. He was invited to speak at USAWC in the wake of the launch of his latest book, “Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War Between Islam and the West.”

CAIR claimed in a May 28 letter to USAWC superintendent Army Maj. Gen. John S. Kem and provost James G. Breckenridge that Ibrahim’s talk would further stoke anger against the Muslim community.

“We also do not believe that there is any benefit to the U.S. in promulgating the inaccurate thesis that Islam is our enemy, as this stereotype only alienates millions of Muslim-Americans,” the letter read.

Initially, CAIR’s requests were ignored.

But when the Muslim civil rights group launched a scathing petition declaring Ibrahim — who is of Egyptian descent — an “Islamophobe” and stating that the school would enable “white nationalism” by inviting him, the USAWC almost immediately postponed the event.

“They are playing the race card,” Ibrahim said in response to these allegations, the Washington Times reported.

Army War College spokesman Robert Martin said the speech was postponed so their education team can “pair Mr. Ibrahim’s military history insights in close proximity with another historical perspective, at a time when [the Army War College] curriculum has addressed historical analysis of influences on conflict,” in a statement to PennLive.

Ibrahim, however, argues that the college did not merely postpone the talk, but canceled it entirely.

“Regardless of the baseless and hysterical nature of CAIR’s and its Islamist allies’ allegations, on June 10, the U.S. Army War College caved in to their demands and canceled the event,” the author wrote in a PJ Media article about the debacle.

Ibrahim said he provided a counter-offer to the college on the day they decided to cancel his visit, saying, “In my last phone call with the USAWC on that same day, I suggested a compromise: turn my lecture into a debate, and pit me against any academic of CAIR’s choosing. Even though I was under no obligation to make such a concession, it still wasn’t good enough for the USAWC.”

“If an ethnic Egyptian and native speaker of Arabic, with verifiable credentials, whose extended relatives continue to be persecuted because they are Christian, can be characterized by Islamist groups with terror links as a ‘racist’ and ‘white nationalist’; and if, of all places, the U.S. Army War College, as opposed to the average ‘liberal’ college, can so easily capitulate to such patently deceptive tactics—the true motives of which are to keep the actual and troubling history between Islam and the West concealed from the military—know that the hour is late indeed,” Ibrahim concluded.

He’s exactly right.

Of all the colleges that should be throwing off the gloves in a fight for freedom of speechand the open exchange of ideas, one would think USAWC would be first in line.