This Christmas season, Middle East Christians are under threat

Last December, my country finally threw off the chains of a hated, despotic regime. For many Syrians, it was a moment filled with hope — the belief that decades of repression had given way to a chance for renewal. Yet by March 2025, that hope had begun to fade. Parts of the country slipped into chaos. Videos circulated on social media and WhatsApp showing armed Islamist militias attacking civilian Christians, Druze, and anyone they branded as “infidels.”

Homes were burned. Entire families were killed. The first wave of violence was expanding and closing in on Christian communities of Suwayda in southern Syria, where many of my family members live.

While Israel has faced a campaign of withering international criticism, American Catholics and evangelicals are hearing very little about the plight of Christians from Egypt to Iran.

Then the killing stopped. It wasn’t widely publicized, but Israel — Syria’s southern neighbor — stepped in to prevent a massacre. Decisive military action stopped the slaughter of men, women, and children — our own relatives — in Suwayda.

For Arab Christians who have lived through so much war and persecution, it was a moment of relief but also a reminder of how little the world seems to care. When Christians are murdered in the Middle East, it rarely makes headlines.

As we come into the Christmas season and a new year, Christians are vanishing under Islamist violence and official repression.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s control and Iranian power have sent the Christian population into a tailspin. In Iraq, the number of Christians has dwindled to just over 100,000 faithful from over one million barely a decade ago. Even in small pockets of Christian life, supposed “safe havens” like Ain Kawa in Erbil, Iraq, Christians survive only because local authorities offer protection. From Sudan to Syria, ancient Christian communities have collapsed in just a generation.

The cradle of Christianity, with few exceptions, has become a region where believers cannot worship or gather without threats to our lives. Intervention from Israel helped prevent a massacre of Christian communities in Suwayda. But the world needs to pay attention to protect the Christians of the Arab world.

Western interest in the Middle East has mostly focused on Hamas’ brutal attacks on Israel in 2023 and Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza. While Israel has faced a campaign of withering international criticism, American Catholics and evangelicals are hearing very little about the plight of Christians from Egypt to Iran. Legacy media ignores them. TikTok algorithms suppress them.

It is perverse that right now — with Christian communities across the Middle East facing extinction — prominent voices like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes are ostracizing Christian Zionism as “a heresy.” In fact, Israel is the best friend Christians in the Middle East can hope to have. Alone in the region, Israel hosts a growing Christian population; alone in the region, Israel has intervened time and again to save Christian communities from eradication.

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Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP via Getty Images

Our brethren in Syria and across the Middle East need our help this year more than ever before. Where churches are destroyed and believers persecuted, American Christians must pay attention, pray, and speak out.

More than that — contra Carlson — let us reach beyond our community. We can and must bring together a coalition of conscience in defense of persecuted minorities abroad, including human rights NGOs, brave anti-Islamist Muslims, and friendly governments in the region.

As Christmas approaches, the Christians of the Arab world are desperately calling for our help. This season, let us answer them.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.