By Elijah J. MAGNIER
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For the first time in a century, Christians across the Middle East are beginning to say aloud what was once unthinkable and terrifying: they have been ignored and abandoned.
From Jerusalem to Chekka and Jbeil (Lebanon), from Suweida to Maaloula (Syria), Christian and minority communities in the Levant are facing not only rising hostility and physical threat, but something even chilling: the complete collapse of domestic and international protection. Their allies in Washington and Europe are either silent, complicit, or too uninterested to care. Their enemies, old and new, are bold again. And in the government power vacuum, incompetence or complicity, the minorities are left by fading Western influence, and a darker reality is taking shape. What once felt like a fragile, uneven survival is now tipping toward isolation, betrayal, and extinction.
The recent statement by US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee—warning that Israel is now actively rejecting and harassing Christian organisations, including long-time pro-Zionist groups from the US, was not just a diplomatic outburst. It was a rupture. Huckabee, a figure deeply aligned with Christian Zionism and Israel’s right-wing leadership, accused Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of mistreating Christian and foreign church-backed organisations. He even pledged to tell American Christians to reconsider their generous donations and cancel pilgrimages to the Holy Land if the hostility continues.
This warning didn’t come from a critic of Israel—it came from one of its most loyal advocates. For decades, Christian Zionists, Western church networks, and European governments have claimed solidarity with Middle Eastern Christians. But when it matters most—in Gaza, in Jerusalem, in Lebanon and Syria—their voices fall silent, or worse, stand with the very powers enabling persecution.
The dangerous arc now confronting Middle Eastern Christians is unmistakable: geopolitical realignment, rising Israeli extremism, the resurgence of jihadists in Syria, where minorities were once slaughtered, Western indifference, and the collapse of historic alliances. Even staunch anti-Hezbollah, pro-Western Christian figures like MP Nadim Gemayel are now saying what would have been unthinkable only months ago: perhaps Hezbollah’s weapons are the last line of defence for Lebanon’s vulnerable minorities.
The alarm bells are ringing across the region’s Christian communities—but once again, few are listening. Perhaps the most jarring shift came not from Hezbollah’s supporters, but from a strong challenger within Lebanon’s traditional Christian establishment. Nadim Gemayel, son of the assassinated president Bachir Gemayel and one of Hezbollah’s fiercest political opponents, issued a stark warning that resonated across the country. Gemayel considered that, today, everyone in Lebanon feels afraid: The Druze, the Shia, and the Christians. The minorities in the Middle East feel how serious the existential menace is. Today, there is new sympathy and justification for Hezbollah retaining its weapons. Gemayel “understands if people say Hezbollah’s weapons are necessary”—not just against Israel, but also against Syria. Coming from a lawmaker who long demanded Hezbollah’s disarmament in the name of sovereignty, this was nothing short of a political earthquake.
Yet this was not an ideological reversal—it was a sober reflection of current realities. Across Lebanon, many now see that the state is too fractured, too weak, and too abandoned by its supposed allies to guarantee their survival. In the absence of protection, some Christians are looking to Hezbollah, whose fighters in past years shed theirownblood to defend Christian towns in Syria from al-Qaeda and ISIS. For them, this isn’t about politics. It’s about survival.
Gemayel’s remarks came in response to two deeply unsettling developments: inflammatory comments by US Special Envoy Thomas Barrack and violent clashes in Syria’s Suweida province, where Bedouin Arab militias attacked minority Druze residents. These incidents sparked fear among Lebanon’s minorities, especially those with cultural and familial ties to Syrian communities that recently endured a massacre against Alawites in northwest Syria.
As if that weren’t enough, Barrack went further, claiming that Lebanon’s coastline belonged to Syria—remarks that ignited panic in Christian-majority areas like Chekka, Batroun, Jbeil, and Jounieh. For many, his words weren’t idle speculation but a glimpse into deeper strategic thinking inside the US administration, suggesting a tacit willingness to accept Syria’s renewed territorial ambitions and Lebanon’s descent into failed-state status.
Across the region, Christians are being squeezed by shifting borders, rising extremism, and new geopolitical deals forged without their presence—or their protection. In Palestine, many are trapped between military occupation and economic collapse. In Syria, Christian communities have been battered by war, displacement, and decades of persecution from both jihadist groups and a self-appointed authoritarian regime. And now, the fear is returning in Lebanon.
The attack on the Druze of Suweida sent a brutal reminder that sectarian targeting is not a relic of Syria’s past—it is part of its ongoing regional playbook against minorities. With Thomas Barrack suggesting that Lebanon’s north and coast “belong to Syria,” minorities inside Lebanon are reading the writing on the wall: no one is coming to stop what may come next.
These tensions are made worse by developments in Damascus. Following a recent Israeli airstrike on the Syrian capital, the self-proclaimed Syrian president—a former ISIS and Al-Qaeda emir with a record of horrific crimes against Alawites, Christians, and Druze—has reportedly begun to reassess his expansionist plans toward Lebanon. This pause may be temporary. The man once responsible for the destruction of churches, the massacre of religious minorities, the kidnapping of nuns in Maaloula and the hosting of thousands of foreign jihadis that are today integrated within the security forces, now wears a presidential title and is positioning himself, with the US blessing, to expand his power again.
In 2013, under the command of (the new Syrian president) Abu Mohammad al-Joulani, then leader of Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria), jihadist fighters stormed the historic Christian town of Maaloula. They desecrated churches, destroyed ancient icons, and abducted 13 Orthodox nuns from the Monastery of St. Thecla—later released in a prisoner exchange. Several Christian civilians were reportedly executed, and others forced to convert. The assault was carried out under Joulani’s direct strategic orders, marking one of the most brutal jihadist attacks on a Christian community during the Syrian war. Maaloula’s fall underscored the existential threat facing religious minorities, and the silence of the West at the time remains a haunting stain on its conscience. Years later, it was Lebanese Hezbollah fighters—primarily Shia—who helped liberate the town, where Aramaic, the ancient language of Jesus Christ, is still spoken today. Hezbollah has lost many fighters in its attempt to achieve the freedom of the ancient Christian town.
The United States, once a partial protector of Christian minorities, has pivoted. The current administration unconditionally supports Israel, even as war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza mount and tensions with Christian allies deepen. Christian Zionist movements, once seen as defenders of Mideast Christianity, are now politically bound to policies that leave local Christians exposed. There is no nuance. No dissent. Just alignment with power, even if it costs communities their survival.
And now, even Jerusalem—the historic heart of Christianity—feels hostile. According to a report by The Guardian, a video filmed in Jerusalem’s Old City captured ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting at a Christian procession carrying a large wooden cross along the Via Dolorosa. The footage sparked national and international outrage, but for the city’s Christian minority, it was just another chapter in what they describe as an alarming surge in religiously motivated harassment.
Since Israel’s most ultranationalist government in history took office, religious leaders—including the Vatican-appointed Latin Patriarch—have warned of rising attacks and growing impunity. “Attacks against Christians have 100% increased this year,” said Yisca Harani, an Israeli Christianity expert, citing spitting, stone-throwing, and vandalism. She told The Guardian that Jewish identity, fuelled by right-wing religious nationalism, is now growing “around anti-Christianity.”
Shockingly, the spitting was defended by Elisha Yered, a far-right settler leader and former adviser in Netanyahu’s coalition, who referred to the act as an “ancient Jewish custom” and justified it as historical revenge for the Crusades. Such rhetoric would have been disavowed immediately in the past. Today, it is widely tolerated and not condoned.
This normalisation of hate in the very city that Christians worldwide consider sacred is a line crossed. And the silence from Western leaders—those who preach religious freedom, who fund interfaith dialogues, who issue lofty Easter messages—has been deafening.
What makes the current moment chilling is its clarity. There are no illusions left. Israel is turning away Christian supporters. Syria’s former warlords are making a comeback. Lebanon, long a fragile Christian-Arab exception, may become the next battleground. And the West—consumed by domestic crisis, partisanship, and selective outrage—is looking the other way.
To the Christians of the Middle East, this isn’t just a diplomatic shift. It’s a moment of existential dread. Extremist local Jewish West Bank residents set fire to a 1,500-year-old Church of St. George in the Christian Palestinian village of Taybeh, north of Ramallah in the West Bank. When churches burn and are blown up in Gaza, your allies are mute. When your existence is in danger, your defenders vanish, and you have to rely on other minorities. When you are killed, the headlines don’t come.
The question is no longer whether the Christian presence in the region will survive; it is whether it will thrive. The question is: How long can it last alone?
Original article: ejmagnier.com
