Slowly eroding: Whatever happened to the 'Christian' Spring in the Middle East?

To refer to the Christians of the Middle East as 'living stones' is poetically apt. First, it refers to the solidity of the community, but then again even stones erode over time. Second, the descriptor ties the community to the many holy structures that dot the Holy Lands which should ideally include Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, as well as Palestine, they are all holy, they all have stones and remnants of the earliest Christian communities. Third, stones are a symbol of resistance as it is with the stone that a Palestinian child throws at an Israeli tank, and we as a community are stones of resistance. Christian Palestinians led and founded resistance and liberation movements in the middle of the last century. They were arguably among the most feared and effective resistance movements. The message here is that we are solid, we are permanent and we aren't going anywhere. But we are being eroded, slowly but surely.

The neo-Ottoman/US/NATO alliance is creating havoc in Syria, targeting minorities is the hallmark of the groups this alliance supports or offshoots of such groups. Many of these groups target Christians whom they dub Kuffar or unbelievers. Most recently, these Ottoman supported groups have attacked the Northern approaches to the Syrian province of Latakia and the town of Kasab leading to the flight of many of its Syrian-Armenian inhabitants.

The recent killing of an elderly Dutch priest by a masked gunman in the Syrian town of Homs highlights once again the vulnerability of the Christian communities of the Middle East who struggle each day to survive amid rising hostility towards their communities from Iraq to Syria. Attacks on Christian towns like Kasab by Syrian rebel groups backed by Turkish artillery and air support only serves to bring back to mind painful, collective cultural memories of Ottoman genocide and their anti-Christian policies. My Palestinian grandmother had many stories to tell of how Ottoman troops treated Christian women in Nazareth during WWI as relayed to me by my late father. Many soldiers considered Christian women fair game and any women who were not covered up were targeted by soldiers billeted in the town.  

Today, Lebanon is one of the few remaining pockets in the Middle East where Christians can still live in relative peace, but for how long I wonder. The steam valve of consensus has managed once again to relieve pressure in the country and defuse a crisis, but this is only a temporary measure. We still face a major hurdle: Presidential elections. The President is elected by MPs in parliament and MPs represent political forces in the country. Politically the country is divided down the middle in to two distinct camps that continue to drift apart, albeit at a slightly slower pace now. So how can any candidate get a majority and who will that be or will we have no President at all? To date no one has given a clear and convincing answer on this question.

So, what future awaits the Christians of the Middle East, will we give up and plead with Western governments to send ships over to evacuate us all? Sounds tempting doesn't it, instant immigration under the pretext of persecution and political exclusion and repression. That would be the easy way out I suppose and it is the way many political forces in the US, Europe and Israel would like things to go, to isolate the Christians from their national Arab base, to dangle the temptation of a new life in the US or Europe before them, the promise of a better life and by so doing destroy what makes our Middle East so special.

Unlike Israel, we, the real people of this land, are still united by a common language and centuries of dialogue and cooperation between the many religious minorities. It is this diversity that the pro-Israel camp wishes to destroy. By destroying our diversity they weaken us, by effectively making the Syrian armed opposition a solely Sunni opposition, they have weakened it and have driven minorities in Syria into the welcoming arms of dictatorship.

Is it really that simple, are we really that suggestible that we fall prey to a Facebook campaign and a few eloquent cries of 'freedom!' and march in line along with the throng down the path to national ruin? The answer is yes we are, we proved it, I was even taken in by the Arab Spring. I failed to ask the crucial question: who is funding this so-called spring and who is paying the salaries of the thousands marshaled in Arab streets and squares demanding the downfall of Arab regimes? An old experienced journalist friend of mine once told me: “You want to know the full story, you want to delve deeper and find the truth, follow the money!”