(July 30, 2007) – Arab Christians are leaving the Palestinian territories in droves due to discrimination and persecution from a Muslim-dominant police force and government, Dr. Justus Weiner, a distinguished scholar in residence at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told reporters and academics at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C. on July 17.

 

“For a number of years now, this minority community [of Christians] has been in dire need of assistance,” he said. “Palestinian Christians are unable to practice their religion in freedom and in peace.

 

“Most in danger are Arab Christians. And most in danger among Arab Christians are those who have converted from Islam. They are often left defenseless against cruelty from Muslim fundamentalists.”

Weiner, an internationally recognized human rights lawyer, began advocating for Palestinian Christians nine years ago, after being surprised to discover that a problem even existed. He learned that “systematic persecution” was being met with total silence by most of the developed world, including human rights groups.

 

Due to the rise of Islamic extremism in the Middle East, Weiner pointed out that the city of Bethlehem, which in 1948 was nearly 80 percent Christian, is today barely 12 percent. He also noted that Christians make up less than 2 percent of the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip. “They’re practically at the point of disappearing—nobody denies this,” he said.  

 

Weiner cited several specific examples of persecution, including an Armenian Christian jeweler arrested without cause and beaten for eight hours in a Palestinian police station.

 

Another case involved a 16-year-old girl from Bethlehem who was kidnapped by a 23-year-old Muslim man who told police she had willingly eloped. High-level diplomacy secured the Christian girl’s release, but only because she was an American citizen.

 

Human rights violations against Palestinian Christians, according to Weiner, also include: individual loss of job or property; firebombed churches; destruction of Christian-based centers; beatings; torture; forced marriages; sexual harassment; and extortion.

 

He noted that most of the persecution has taken place since the empowerment of the Palestinian Authority in 1995 under Yasser Arafat. He described the torture suffered by Christian converts from Islam since then as “the kind of thing you only read about in Medieval books—it’s very difficult to describe.”

 

Anti-Christian violence made international news last month when a Catholic convent was ransacked and desecrated during Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza, according to the Associated Press (AP). The incident touched off fresh fear among Gaza’s Christian community, which numbers 3,000 compared with 1.4 million Muslims.

 

Because of the work of lawyers like Weiner, other human rights activists are increasingly sounding an alarm in the international community to wake up the world to the plight of Arab Christians throughout the Middle East. Analysts estimate as much as half of Iraq’s Christians have left the country.

 

At a “Save the Christians” rally in Rome earlier this month, the AP reported several hundred people gathered to demand an end to the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. In addition to top Vatican officials and Italy’s former Premier Berlusconi, a prominent Jewish activist from the U.S. also attended.

 

“I stand here tonight as an American Jew and as a survivor of the Holocaust to say to you that ‘never again’ was a pledge that the Jewish people learned with great pain and sadness,” said Abraham Foxman, U.S. director of the Anti-Defamation League. “But ‘never again’ is not limited to Jewish pain and suffering…I pledge to you that our voices will be heard whenever Christians are discriminated against.”