Israeli envoy: UN ignores intimidation, exile and murder of Christians in Arab countries

The international community is turning a blind eye to the murder of minorities in the Arab world, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor said this weekend.

Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor – Photo: AP

“Last year police in Saudi Arabia stormed a Christian prayer meeting and arrested its entire congregation, including women and children. … In 2013, three Iranian Christians were caught selling Bibles, found guilty of ‘crimes against state security,’ and sentenced to 10 years in prison.”

Prosor said that while minorities were persecuted and slaughtered throughout the region, “there is only one place in the Middle East where minorities have the freedom to practice their faith, to change faiths, or to practice no faith at all — and that is Israel.”

“It’s time for the U.N. Security Council to break its silence on the murder and expulsion of Christians and other minorities in Arab states,” the Israeli envoy said.

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

Prosor also praised the Kurdish fighters in Iraq for their courage and called on the international community to back them, stressing the Kurds’ right to political independence.

Earlier, Prosor warned against allowed a Hamas-controlled terrorist state to be established in Judea and Samaria.

“The Palestinians want a state without negotiations, without compromise, and without a peace deal,” he said.

“Imagine what a state like that would look like — an extremist Islamist terrorist state. A state that will be funded by Iran, will be armed like Hezbollah in Lebanon, that will be as unstable as Syria and Iraq and as dangerous as the Islamic State.”

 

View original Israel Hayom publication at: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=24483