The New Middle East

"If we stay in Syria, they will kill us. It is that simple."
 "Who ate the heart of a human being? It was not someone from the Syrian army, was it?"
"Why doesn't the West help the Syrian Christians? Is it because we support Assad? I can tell you that before the trouble we were very safe even at night. We had free schools and medicine. In return, all we had to do was not become involved in politics, so we didn't."
"We would like to go to Canada because we have heard that there is a program there to accept Syrian refugees."
"Former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice promised us a new Middle East a few years ago and she turned out to be right. This is the new Middle East. We all kill each other."
Rami Sammaan, Zahyle, Lebanon

"If someone comes to your house and says he will kill you, do you dance with him or do you flee? I feared my 12-year-old daughters, Shames, would be raped. All Syrian Christians are afraid. But some Christians cannot leave. They do not even have enough money for a bus ticket."
"If Assad goes, it doesn't mean that it is over. It will only get worse."
"I sold my house, which was in a Muslim area, for $4,000 before I crossed the border last December, but those savings are all gone now. I can't help who I am. I was born a Christian. I will die a Christian."
Mousa Fahmi Issa, Zahle, Lebanon

Well, in fact, this is not the 'new' Middle East. In Lebanon, in the 1970s, and the 1980s, Syrians, Lebanese, Shia, Sunni, Kurds, Christians, Palestinians were not only killing but slaughtering one another. The cruelties perpetrated on one another were atrocities of horror, equal in measure to the one so deplored by mention of the Sunni rebel leader who was seen on a video to bite the heart of an executed soldier, shouting "God is Great!"

And here is the dictator Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has by his directives to his military, caused the international community to gasp in disbelief that a government would set out to destroy a majority segment of its citizenry because it initially requested consideration for equality with the protected Shiite citizens. Bashar al-Assad has demonstrated that there are no actions too grossly inhumane for him to foist upon his own, but the minority Christians trust his mercy.

Saddam Hussein gassed his own Kurdish population, and dispersed the Marsh Arabs, and held his majority Shiite citizens in disdain, never hesitating to commit the slaughter that suited his purposes. When Iraq went to war with Iran, both countries unleashed on one another all the viciously violent venom that tribal societies vent upon one another. When Saddam was removed from power the vacuum allowed Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites full vent of their murderous hatred of one another.

And there has been a renaissance elsewhere in the Muslim world, as well. In Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Syria and elsewhere in the Arab/Muslim world sectarian hatreds and tribal antipathies ensure that the 'normalcy' of peace remains elusive in that geography. And everywhere in the Muslim world, since most of their indigenous thousands-years residential Arab Jews have long since been expelled, attention has turned to Arab Christians, an abomination in the minds of Arab Muslims.

As Islamists flood into Syria from Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Libya and Iraq eager to take part in the bloodbath of Shias and the imperative to transform the country into a Sunni Sharia-led totalitarian state to balance that of Shia-majority-led Iran, Syrian Christians, those who can, flood out of Syria to find temporary shelter in neighbouring countries. Christians have become targets in Gaza, in Egypt, and anywhere else that jihadist Islamism has elevated itself.

Of Syria's 2.5 million Christians it cannot be known how many have fled for fear of their lives but the estimate seems several hundred thousand, most to Lebanon. In Islamabad, Pakistan, 78 Christians were slaughtered through the deadly devices of twin suicide bombers; their penalty for attending their ancient church. In Kenya, members of al-Shabab went on a hunting spree at a popular shopping mall, looking for Christians.


Pakistanis help victims of a suicide attack at a church in Peshawar, Pakistan, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2013. A suicide bomb attack on a historic church in northwestern Pakistan killed scores of people on Sunday, officials said, in one of the worst assaults on the country’s Christian minority in years. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad)

Egypt's Coptic Christians have been the target of Muslim Brotherhood militias. Iraq has been leaking Christiansk, and Christians in the Palestinian West Bank have been leaving as well to preserve themselves from the murderous rancour of violent Islam. While in Syria, al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra has demonstrated its vicious antipathy for Christians who remain in Syria at their peril.