Arab Christians and Antisemitism

When my parents were growing up in Detroit in the 50s, many of their neighbors were from the various Christian communities in the Middle East. The city and surrounding area had a large population of Lebanese and Syrians (including native sons Casey Kasem, Jamie Farr, and Danny Thomas), Pontian Greeks from Turkey (as popularized in Jeffery Eugenedes' novel Middlesex), and an ethnoreligious group from Iraq who refer to themselves as "Chaldeans" and are not well known in the US outside of Michigan. Long before there was ever an All American Muslim TV show set in Dearborn, it was these Christians from the Middle East who were Detroit's "All American" immigrants. As far as I am aware, there was no ethnic tension between these groups and their Jewish neighbors.

I later learned the fascinating history of these groups. The Chaldeans, which many ethnographers call 'Assyrians', consider themselves to be the true descendants of the ancient Sumerian and Akkadian civilizations, and DNA evidence has shown that they are somewhat ethnically distinct from their Muslim neighbors. The Coptic Christians in Egypt were the most direct link to that country's ancient past, having spoken the Egyptian language until several centuries ago. Christians were a majority in Syria and Lebanon until massive immigration in the 20th century reduced them to a vulnerable minority.

Today, throughout these regions, Christians are in a precarious situation. Possibly half of Iraq's remaining Christians have fled sectarian violence in recent years, and those that remain are in danger from frequent attacks, including church bombings, assassinations, and massacres. In Egypt, the Coptic community, which makes up about 10% of the population, has suffered persecution for years, including increasingly frequent and violent massacres and a second-class status in many respects. Syria's small Christian minority lives in fear of what a toppling of the Assad regime might bring.

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Given their fascinating ancient origins, tenacity for holding onto their culture and traditions, and current percarious minoirty status with widespread victimhood at the hands of the local Muslim majorty, I had assumed that the Arab world's Christians would be natural allies for the Jews of the Middle East. If not allies, then at least more moderate in their opposition.

But personally, my experiences at a certain blog did not bear that out. The Arab commenters there were all Christians, without a single Muslim among them, and yet were far from moderate in their politics with regard to Israel and Jews, even famously favoring nuclear arms in the hands of Hezbollah and Iran. I don't believe there was a person among them who supported a two-state solution. I often wondered why such folks would want to cast their lot so thoroughly with predominantly Muslim contemporary regimes and movements that obviously dispised them, and under which they would not fare well.

Now my internet combing has led me to some fascinating and disturbing quotes, reported in this article featured on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's website. It seems that some Christian religious leaders in the Middle East are trying to out perform their Islamist neighbors in Jew-hate and incitement.

There are the standard doses of Elders of Zion conspiratorial nonsense:

George Saliba - the Syriac Orthodox Church's Bishop in Lebanon when asked by Al-Dunya TV, who was behind the Arab Spring, responded "the source... behind all these movements, all these civil wars, and all these evils" in the Arab world is nothing other than Zionism, "deeply rooted in Judaism." The Jews, he says, are responsible for financing and inciting the turmoil in accordance with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

including 'if it's bad, it must be the Joooooz':

Last fall, the world was shocked by the horrific attack on a Baghdad church that left 58 dead and 67 wounded. Despite the fact that Muslim fanatics had posted threats on the Internet for weeks prior to the slaughter, Melkite Greek Patriarch Gregory III Laham said the terrorist attackers were certainly not Muslims, but probably those trained and supervised "by global Zionism." It was part of "a Zionist conspiracy against Islam," the Christian leader declared, adding that, "All this behavior has nothing to do with Islam... but it is actually a conspiracy planned by Zionism...and "is also a conspiracy against Arabs and the predominantly Muslim Arab world that aims at depicting Arabs and Muslims in Arab countries as terrorist and fundamentalist murderers..."

And even the old "Christ-killer" charge:

Back In 2007, Pope Shenouda III (of the Egyptian Coptic Church) denounced Western churches for exonerating Jews for Christ's death. Jews were "Christ-killers" because "the New Testament says they are."

Pope Shenouda also goes for full-on Israel derangement:

Jews are a cursed people who have their hands indulged in the blood of Palestinians.

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Now of course it is possible to find awful quotes from just about anywhere, directed at just about anyone, but in the last case we are talking about the Coptic Pope, a man who had to live in exile for several years because of persecution from the Egyptian regime.

Which brings me to an interesting hypothesis:

One could think that this seeming wave of immoderation in regard to Israel and Jews on the part of these Arab Christian leaders is the result of their percarious situation in their own countries, where they feel the need to prove their solidarity with their local majority and preempt the inevitable accusations that they are a potential Western and/or Zionist fifth column. Or the result of being steeped in an environment of constant anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda.

But especially Pope Shenouda's comments envoke an older, and more specifically Christian, sort of antisemitism. The Jews as 'Christ-killers' is not something that it seems would derive from, or would particularly resonate with, Muslim or Arab-nationalist style antisemitism. It is possible we are seeing a sinister merging of old-fashioned religious-based Christian antisemitism with contemporary ethnically based antisemitism.

Discourse in the Arab world toward Jews and Israel has become toxic. It is long past time for not only Muslims but Christians as well to walk it back. In the 1950s in the upper Midwest Jews and Christian Arabs lived in harmony as neighbors. Today in the Middle East they do not, and it is not primarily because of what Israel has done, but what has been allowed to fester in the toxic rhetorical environment.