Amine Gemayel, Lebanon’s former president, raised the “specter of genocide” in speaking of atrocities against Christians and other minorities in the Middle East. Gemayel says Middle East Christians have never been in more extreme danger
By Managing Editor
“I have never in my life witnessed Middle East Christians in such extreme danger,” Amine Gemayel warned on Wednesday. Speaking at a public lecture atBoston College, the former president of Lebanon called 2014 “a year of existential crisis” for Middle East Christians. He raised “the specter of genocide,” in the context of atrocities suffered by Christians and other religious minorities in the region at the hands of the Islamic State and other extremists.
“If present negative trends continue to intensify,” Gemayel said, “we must start thinking about the unthinkable: the extinction of Christianity” in the region. In addition to an enormous human toll, the former president claimed that the end of Middle East Christianity would “destabilize the region for generations.”
Compounding the crisis, Gemayel said, is the “inexplicable” lack of attention the issue receives from the international community. In particular, he said, “the response by the United States has been a resounding non-response.” Gemayel noted Washington’s failure last summer to use airstrikes to halt the Islamic State’s mass religious cleansing of Iraqi Christians and Yezidis while using these means to defend other interests, such as oil installations.
While acknowledging that the U.S. is “constantly buffeted by demands” for proactive policies, Gemayel pointed out that the U.S. not only has “the military means to do more,” but is politically positioned to act due to lead its “strong relationships with regional governments.”
Specifically, Gemayel encouraged Washington to support the Vatican’s proposal for “a UN-backed military force, with Muslim participation, to stop religious cleansing in the Middle East,” and the establishment of internationally-guaranteed “in-country safe havens.” He furthermore appealed to the United States to intensify its support for Lebanon in its fight against the Islamic State and in its care for Syrian refugees. Ultimately, he asserted, an “Arab Marshall Plan” would be needed to reconstruct Arab countries and encourage Arab youth to “embrace democratic ideas as a prelude to the establishment of democratic systems.” Gemayel also stressed the need for responsible Muslim leadership to turn their expressions of sympathy with persecuted Christians into “a comprehensive plan of action.”
Gemayel’s talk was cosponsored by Christian Solidarity International and Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry, Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages and Literatures, Department of Political Science, and Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life. This Friday, March 27, the UN Security Council will be addressing the existential threat to Middle East minorities raised by President Gemayel.
The full video of Gemayel’s talk will be available for viewing at www.middle-east-minorities.com, along with all the other lectures from Christian Solidarity International’s lecture series on the Future of Religious Minorities in the Middle East.
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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Why the US invaded Iraq int he first place? to abort the birth of a strong Arab nation that might threaten the zionist occupiers of Palestine.
The USA and the zionist apartheid occupation are the source of the problem and can never be part of the solution. They created the mess in the first place and they are responsible for all the crimes that happened as a result of their “New Middle East” they are breaching of.
The USA is not fool or dont know what they are doing, they are systematically devastating the Arab countries and fragmenting them to keep the zionist occupation the dominant player in the Middle East, and fragmenting the Arab world will inevitably resulted in deep socio-economic changes where the fragile and minorities pay the highest price for the US to plunder more Arab oil and natural resources and the zionist to grab more Arab lands.
It is with and within such racist advisers” like Gemayel, the US foreign policy is sunk deep into the sectarian policies that intentionally aim at devastating the Arab socio=econolic structure resulting into chaos or what Mr G W Bush called once “the creative anarchy” !!