Israel — Mideast's Safe Harbor for Religious Freedom

In what was a tour de force, in his latest U.N. Security Council speech on abuses of religious minorities in the Middle East on March 27, Ron Prosor, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, calmly and lucidly decoded the Orwellian machinations of the United Nations by stating: “There is only one place in the Middle East where minorities have the freedom to practice their faith, change faiths, or practice no faith at all — and that is Israel.”

Amb. Prosor’s “Middle East Ethnic Minority” speech is one every Jewish advocate should carry around in his back pocket, and give to anyone who accuses Israel of being an “Apartheid” state. View it at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FqqgBTlrokA.

Prosor began by explaining in these days of the Jewish Passover, there is a terrible new “exodus” that is plaguing the Middle East, one “driven by a plague of [Islamic] persecution aimed at Christians, Kurds, Yazidi, Bahai, and of course, the Jews.”

He related that after the Muslim countries murdered thousands of Jews and forced hundreds of thousands to leave the host Muslim countries, the Muslims had no one left to persecute. So, the “extremists have turned on the Christians.

At the turn of the 20th century, Christians comprised 26 percent of the Middle East’s population. Today, that figure is less than 10 percent.” In ISIS-plagued Iraq, “Christians were given the grim choice of converting to Islam or face death by beheading, stoning, or crucifixion. Fearing for their lives, tens of thousands of Christians have fled to northern Iraq and taken refuge in Kurdistan.”

Then, in what is clearly a political blockbuster on the independent Kurdish state issue, Prosor, on behalf of the Israel government, stated, “The Kurds are the leading force in the fight against ISIS. They have shown tremendous courage and fortitude. The Kurds need the support of the international community and they deserve political independence.”

Then Prosor turned to explain that Israel, and only Israel, is the sole bastion of religious and ethnic freedom in the Middle East where “Israel is home to the Baha'i World Centre; it is the only place in the Middle East where Druze have reached the highest echelons of society; and, it is the only place in the Middle East where the Christian population is growing.”

And then, in a shocking comparison of Israel’s treatment of Christians with the Palestinian Authority’s, Amb. Prosor, related that, “Since Israel’s establishment in 1948, its Christian communities have expanded more than 1,000 percent and Israeli Christians serve in our parliament and on our Supreme Court. The same cannot be said for Christians living under the Palestinian leadership.

"Since Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, half the Christian community has fled. After the Palestinian Authority took control of Bethlehem in 1995, Palestinian gunmen seized Christian homes and looted the Church of the Nativity. Owing to this persecution, the city’s Christian population fell by 70 percent.”

In evaluating Prosor’s brave and historic speech, if one could find only one nit, it would that Prosor too glibly stated, “Radical Islamists have a saying, 'First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.'” In reality, the radical Islamists are really saying, “First the Saturday people, then, the Sunday people, then, the Friday people who don’t agree with me that I’m the caliph.”

For Amb. Prosor’s U.N. speech in full, email Mark Langfan at mapmun@aol.com.