CBS Makes a Bad Bet
The plight of Christians in the Middle East – including the growing threat to ancient Christian communities posed by the rise of radical Islam – is a story that needs to be told. Sadly, it isn’t told often enough. In fact, Jeffrey Goldberg, one of the smartest, best-informed journalists reporting on events in the Middle East today, called it “one of the most under-covered stories in international news.”
So it should have been commendable when the popular CBS weekly news program 60 Minutes ran a piece last year titled “Christians of the Holy Land” that discussed the threats posed to Christians in the Middle East – in particular, in the Palestinian territories – and lamented the exodus of Christians from the region. But, perhaps predictably, it didn’t work out that way. The 60 Minutes report downplayed the disastrous effects of radical Islam, and instead placed the lion’s share of blame for the suffering of Palestinian Christians on a familiar, and convenient, culprit: Israel. (more…)
Comments (39) »Wednesday, April 10th, 2013 at 1:29 PM | David Kuner
A Christian Catastrophe
Col. Ralph Peters, writing in the New York Post, beautifully lays out the facts of Christianity’s birth and growth in the Middle East. He explains that, long before Rome held any position of power in Christendom, communities across the Middle East were centers of Christian thought and life. Radical Islam, Peters writes, is bringing it all to a sad end – and no one is saying a thing.
For a century and a half, the varied strands of Middle East Christianity have faced increasingly fierce pogroms and, for the Armenians, outright genocide. But with the rise of Wahhabi and Salafist terror, the long, slow-motion Holocaust accelerated.
Ruins at Caesarea by the Sea (Photo: Flickr/ Christyn)
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013 at 8:52 AM | Stand For Israel
Blaming Israel, Not Radical Islamists,For Christian Woes
Jonathan Tobin, writing at Commentary, points out that – despite the fact that Christians in the Holy Land overwhelmingly suffer from an aggressive, ascendant form of Islamist fundamentalism – the news media uses holidays such as Easter as an opportunity to point out the difficulties of these communities and blame the trouble on Israel.
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