Letters | 14 April 2012

Threatened Christians

Sir: Douglas Davis’s article on the plight of Arab Christians (‘Out of the east’, 7 April) raised a very important issue. What a shame he cynically exploited their misery to perform a clumsy character assassination on Muslims generally. Conjuring sensational phrases like ‘judenrein’ to raise the spectre of 1930s German fascism, was not only utterly irrelevant; it reminded the reader of Mr Davis’s highly partial agenda.

He doesn’t mention, for instance, that the Syrian Christian community’s plight is bound up with their perceived tactical support for the repressive Assad regime. It’s indisputably tragic, but it is not black and white. Secondly, last time I was in the West Bank, it was not the Muslims who were making life deliberately untenable for the ancient Christian communities around Bethlehem, but Mr Davis’s former readership up the road in Jerusalem. At that time the village I visited was being rendered non-viable by Israeli wire fences that girdled and bisected it.