Demography, persecution, destiny, and Jew-hatred in the Middle East
It may have come as a surprise to some people when Ted Cruz got booed when he called for solidarity with Israel when addressing a group of Christian Arabs as keynote speaker, because American Christians these days tend to be very supportive of Israel. But it probably didn’t surprise Spengler (David P. Goldman), who wrote this article back in 2009 on the situation of Christians in the Middle East vis a vis the Muslim majority and the Jewish minority:
Christianity in the Levant ultimately failed for the same reason that it failed in Europe: populations that are nominally Christian did not trouble to reproduce…
…Their elite misplayed its hand seeking influence through Arab nationalism, and now stands to lose everything to political Islam. As a culture, the Arabs are in profound crisis ”“ their most celebrated poet, the Syrian “Adonis”, calls them “extinct” ”“ and their decline weighs doubly upon the dwindling Christina minority.
And when in decline, blame the Jews, which many of the Arab Christians seem to do. But despite the persecution of Arab Christians by Arab Muslims that has only escalated since the article was written, there is a safe haven for Arab Christians today. You guessed it:
There is little risk, however, that the Holy Land will end up without Christians. Although Arab Christians are indeed leaving areas controlled by Muslims, Christians are immigrating to Israel itself, where the Christian community has doubled in size in the past 15 years. Some estimates put the number of Christians in Israel at nearly 300,000, twice the official count. To Israel’s 120,000 Arab Christians and 30,000 others must be added Christian immigrants from Eastern European, as well as many Filipinos and others who came as guest workers and have settled in Israel.
I’m not sure how that would work, though, because Christians wouldn’t have the right of return to Israel.
And when in decline, blame the Jews, which many of the Arab Christians seem to do.
I have known three generations of a family of Palestinian Christian origin. Well before the Six Day War, the patriarch told his children to get out of the West Bank. The reason, he informed his children, is that Muslims will always favor Muslims over Christians in hiring and promotions. As the patriarch was a civil servant in the Jordanian-administered West Bank, he knew what he was talking about.
A number of his children went to the US, earned STEM graduate degrees, and did very well for themselves. A grandson of the patriarch, like his uncles, went to the US for grad school in a STEM discipline.
This particular grandson of the patriarch abandoned a promising STEM career in the US to become an activist in the Palestinian cause against Israel. He returned to the West Bank to continue his activist career at the source.
This particular grandson of the patriarch can crank up invective against the Joos at the snap of a finger. Interesting that he has a cousin, not on the patriarch’s side of the family, who can cite chapter and verse of Muslim discrimination against him as a Christian. Does the patriarch’s grandson ever make any public protest about his cousin’s mistreatment at the hands of the Muslims? Noooo. For him it’s all about the Joos.
Islam gets them while they are young. Far younger than when the Left starts.
Those Christina’s!
The advent of Obama and the leftist Democrats has uncovered a very unsettling fact about human nature. Many people, including very smart people, are extremely susceptible to the mimetic process. As the leftists dismantle the traditional structures of Western Civilization the mimetic process becomes more powerful.
Back 2002 I read Sennott’s book, The Body and the Blood, about the exodus of Christians from the Middle East. Well-written, with what struck me as a very even-handed representation of points of view. Ultimately, these matters will always come back to, “there is nothing new under the sun.”
When elephants fight, the mice have got real troubles.
I honestly think that we’re early on in a horrific Islamic war — which pits Muslims against the rest of the planet.
I expect that the outcome will parallel that of Berlin a few generations back.
I further expect that this hyper conflict will make all prior wars insignificant.
It’s entirely likely that al Baghdadi’s name will supplant Hitler and Stalin and Mao — as they have supplanted Napoleon, Caligula, and all prior caliphs.
And who can overlook ebola.
It will be passing strange if ebola does not exact a horrific toll across all lands.
Soetoro is repeating the fundamental error of the 14th Century: he’s racing TOWARDS ebola — as if the medical experts can get a handle on it.
The very nature of a viral infection (permutation with transmission) means that ebola is a pathogen that we can’t handle.
It’s the height of arrogance to think we can.
At this very time, honest experts admit that it’s already gone too far. Where and when it counts, society has entirely broken down.
And we have seen nothing yet. Ebola is still a rural pathogen. It has yet to cut loose in a significant city — one with lots of rapid human connections: jet planes, trains, highways, ships.
Some are guesstimating that Lagos will have to be quarantined — and that Nigerian oil will have to be embargoed.
If the authorities keep monkeying around, all of Africa will have to be quarantined.
If ebola does break out — figure it to run riot across the Islamic world: it’s their mosques. No Muslim can NOT become cross-connected if an ebola-Achmed prays in town.
Should that bleak pandemic prevail — WWV is largely delayed.
And in all of these things, we have a certified Gonnabee with NPD racking his brain… calling the big shots.