In his latest UN Security Council speech on abuses of religious minorities in the Middle East Friday, Ron Prosor, Israel’s UN Ambassador, lucidly decoded the Orwellian machinations of the United Nations by stating: “There is only one place in the Middle East where minorities have the freedom to practice their faith, change faiths, or practice no faith at all – and that is Israel.”
Amb. Prosor began by explaining that these days, as the Jewish Passover approaches, there is a terrible new “exodus” that is plaguing the Middle East, one “driven by a plague of [Islamic] persecution aimed at Christians, Kurds, Yazidi, Bahai, and of course, the Jews.”
He related that after the Muslim countries murdered thousands of Jews and forced hundreds of thousands to leave the host Muslim countries, the Muslims had no one left to persecute. So, the “extremists have turned on the Christians.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Christians comprised 26% of the Middle East’s population. Today, that figure is less than 10%.” In ISIS-plagued Iraq, “Christians were given the grim choice of converting to Islam or face death by beheading, stoning or crucifixion. Fearing for their lives, tens of thousands of Christians have fled to northern Iraq and taken refuge in Kurdistan.”
Amb. Prosor stated on behalf of the Israel government that “The Kurds are the leading force in the fight against ISIS. They have shown tremendous courage and fortitude. The Kurds need the support of the international community and they deserve political independence.”
Then he turned to explain that Israel, and only Israel, is the sole bastion of religious and ethnic freedom in the Middle East: “Israel is home to the Baha'i World Center; it is the only place in the Middle East where Druze have reached the highest echelons of society; and, it is the only place in the Middle East where the Christian population is growing.”
In an eye-opening comparison of Israel’s treatment of Christians with the Palestinian Authority’s, Amb. Prosor related that, “Since Israel’s establishment in 1948, its Christian communities have expanded more than 1,000 percent and Israeli Christians serve in our parliament and on our Supreme Court. The same cannot be said for Christians living under the Palestinian leadership. Since Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, half the Christian community has fled. After the Palestinian Authority took control of Bethlehem in 1995, Palestinian gunmen seized Christian homes and looted the Church of the Nativity. Owing to this persecution, the city’s Christian population fell by 70%.”
“Radical Islamists have a saying,” he noted: “'First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people'” – a sinister allusion to the plan to defeat the Jews in Israel, whose Sabbath is on Saturday, and then move on to the Christian world, whose Sabbath is on Sunday. He could well have added that in today's Middle East, “the Friday people who don’t accept the Caliphate” are also in line for a destruction.