One of the most frustrating things about the danger of the Muslim invasion of Europe and the human tragedy of the refugee crisis could have been avoided, if only the media had been willing to report the truth.
Now, two and half years later, Secretary of State John Kerry is finally admitting what I learned vividly on a trip about how Christians were being targeted and killed by their Muslim neighbors because of their Christianity.
In September 2013 I traveled to Beirut, Lebanon to cover a story that the mainstream media and the Obama administration were burying: the story of the Christian genocide in the Middle East.
Just a couple of weeks earlier, I was in the USA reporting on the story of the U.S. backed rebel coalition attacks on the small Christian village of Maaloula, about 45 minutes north of Damascus, Syria. I was getting all my information from the internet. The reports were sketchy, and solid facts were hard to come by. I felt like I was called to travel to the Middle East to get the real story.
On the plane into Beirut, I sat next to a man named Fadi, a Lebanese native and Maronite Christian, who was now living in France. His father had passed away in Lebanon and now the family was getting together for a memorial.
We talked about the strikes by the Syrian rebels against the town of Maaloula that I’ve written about for Breitbart News. I explained how most Americans weren’t paying much attention to what was going on in Syria until President Barack Obama began to talk about attacking it.
Fadi asked me, “The Christians in the United States, do they care about what’s happening to the Christians here?”
The media and the Obama administration had decided that Americans either wouldn’t notice or didn’t care. As I predicted in a video that I made in Lebanon on that trip, there was no way the crisis created by the Obama administration was going to remain in the Middle East.
Fadi told me he grew up in Lebanon during the civil war there. He said for many Lebanese, it created a sense of having no stable future. He felt the current Syrian strife was going to have the same effect and of course, he turned out to be right.
I landed at Beirut airport in the afternoon and coming off the plane, it was virtually indistinguishable from every American airport with its big photos and ads for banks and watches.
I had no problems going through the Visa process. When I said I was American, I was waved through customs without even a look.
Within a few days, I was in Lebanon sitting on a sofa with a woman who was attacked in Maaloula because she was a Christian.
She described an attack on Christians that the Obama Administration and Republicans like John McCain enabled. It’s even more ominous because it’s part of a pattern on the part of President Barack Obama, Senator John McCain, and others of backing forces–such as Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood–who are targeting Christians.
Christianity in the Middle East is on the verge of being wiped out by Islamic jihadists, and the United States government has helped make it happen.
The attack on Maaloula was carried out by U.S. backed rebel forces. It happened concurrently with John Kerry calling the Free Syria Army “moderates” in Senate testimony — rebels emboldened by Obama and McCain’s talk of launching missiles against the Assad regime.
All the foreign policy rhetoric comes down to real stories like this. Listen to this woman describe what happened in 2013: a jihadist suicide bomber took out the checkpoint in Maaloula. As you listen, remember what John McCain said about shouting “Allahu Akbar” being the same as shouting ‘Thank God!”
The attack on the predominantly Christian village of Maaloula was aided by Muslims living in the town. The revelation that their neighbors were joining with the Syrian rebel jihadists to terrorize Christians in the small village about 45 minutes north of Damascus came as a shock to them.
For weeks in early September, 2013 the world got sketchy reports on the back and forth fighting in Maaloula, as combined Syrian rebel forces consisting of U.S. backed ‘Free Syria Army’ fighters battled next to al-Qaeda backed al-Nusra troops against Syrian government forces for control of the town.
The Maaloula survivors, speaking out for the first time, said that the Free Syria Army troops were as one with the al-Nusra warriors. They described in heartbreaking detail how Maaloula’s townspeople were terrorized and some killed for being Christian.
The attack began with a suicide bomber attacking the local checkpoint. One survivor said that armed Muslims were inside her house almost immediately and held a machine gun to her husband’s head. The Islamists bragged about smashing a statue of Mary and taunted the family for their Christianity. The survivor broke down in tears describing her fear that her daughter would be raped by the men and that the family would be killed.
When the Maaloula witness was told that U.S Sec. of State John Kerry had referred to the FSA forces as “moderate” in Senate testimony, she closed her eyes, shook her head back and forth and said, “No no no no no.”
She said that she didn’t trust the press after seeing their reporting on the situation in Maaloula, which deemphasized the Islamist elements of the attack.
Is it too late to save Christianity in the Middle East? I discussed that on this Friday’s episode of Breitbart News Daily.
Follow Breitbart News investigative reporter and Citizen Journalism School founder Lee Stranahan on Twitter at @Stranahan.