The "Arab Spring" was an apocalypse for Christians in the Middle East.

Giulio Meotti The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books.. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary. More from the author ► The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books.. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary.

They called it the "Arab Spring."

In Egypt everything was coming apart after the democratic travesty under the Muslim Brotherhood and only another coup organized by a general saved the country.

Syria now looks like a Bosch painting: 500 thousand dead and the near-death of Christianity in a "guerre pour rien", a war for nothing.

Libya no longer exists. Iraq is a tragic joke. In Iran, the galleys are full. In Turkey, the Sultan replaced secularism. Yemen has become the cemetery of 2,400 children (the last massacre of 40 children under Saudi bombs, but woe to he who talks about it).

And the Palestinian Arab territories are on the verge of another Jihad against Israel.



We must thank Barack Obama, the smart politologists who wanted to rely on political Islam and the journalists who only saw Twitter and not the Salafists.

We must thank Barack Obama, the smart politologists who wanted to rely on political Islam and the journalists who only saw Twitter and not the Salafists. It seemed like a spring, but was only a winter that ended up devastating not only North Africa and the Middle East, but also helping to destabilize Europe.

And for Christians, it was more than a winter. It was the apocalypse.

The New York Times just reported from Tal Tamer, a Christian village in northern Syria, now controlled by the Kurds. "The church is a pile of rubble, its bell tower and its cross toppled over like a felled tree. The dirt paths are overgrown, walked by stray dogs. Most homes are empty, their owners in Germany, Australia, the United States and elsewhere".

The Islamic State attacked the area in 2015, seizing over 220 Assyrian Christians. About 10,000 Assyrian Christians had lived in more than 30 villages there before the civil war began in 2011, and there were more than two dozen churches. Now, 900 people remain and only one church holds regular services. Some of the villages are completely empty. Another village has only two residents: a mother and her son.

70,000 Armenian Christians have fled Syria. They were 100,000 before the war. Today there are 30,000. According to data recently announced by Arshak Poladian, the Armenian ambassador in Syria, "70 percent of the Armenian community has fled".

Only 7 Armenian churches out of 17 have been spared. 11 Armenian schools have been destroyed and only one will be rebuilt. There were 1,300 students at the Karen Jeppe school in Aleppo before the war. Today there are 300 remaining.

The Armenians in Syria are the descendants of the survivors of the genocide under the Turks of 1915. Today, history is repeated with Islamic fundamentalists. The European countries, intimidated by the Turks, are still censuring themselves about the genocide of a century ago. They would not dare to say something about these new, frightening numbers.

Christian girls kidnapped and turned into sex slaves, churches turned into rubble, murdered faithful and clergy, ghost villages, entire missing communities. The end of Eastern Christianity took place in the complicit silence of Western Europe, which saw it but kept silent and turned away.