MOSHE PHILLIPS:CHRISTIANS CRY FOR HELP IN EGYPT AS CHURCHES ARE BURNED
In Cairo on Saturday, May 7 Muslim protesters attacked two Coptic Christian churches. The rioters set one of the churches on fire. Twelve have been killed and over 200 injured in the violence.
Simon Caldwell of the Catholic News Service (CNS) reported on May 10 that:
Bishop Antonios Aziz Mina of Giza said Egypt would descend into anarchy if such outbreaks of violence were allowed to go unpunished.”The police need to say clearly to those who have done this: ‘You cannot do this. It is not allowed,’” he said in a May 9 telephone interview with the British branch of Aid to the Church in Need, a Catholic charity helping persecuted Christians. ”Without action from the police and the army, it will be chaos, complete anarchy,” the bishop said. ”The army will not stand up against the people who do this sort of thing,” he said. “They want to stay neutral. The police appear, but very slowly. They are frightened. They have not been strong enough.”
One did not have to be clairvoyant to know that 2011 was not going to be a good year to be a Coptic Christian in Egypt. On January 1, 2011 23 Copts were murdered in a church bombing in Alexandria. Over 90 were injured. The U.S. mainstream media was too willing to try and downplay the Islamic terrorism and failed to report it as a harbinger of anti-Christian violence yet to come. So far in May, Muslim rioters have set two Cairo churches on fire. Twelve have been killed and over 200 injured in the violence.
Just days before the so-called “Arab Spring” protesters in Cairo captured the world’s headlines, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by former secretary general of the United Nations Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Boutros-Ghali is an Egyptian Coptic Christian and his article was his reaction to the January 6 Islamic terrorist bombing of an Alexandria church on Coptic Christmas Eve.
The Wall Street Journal’s lack of good judgment in providing a forum to Boutros-Ghali should be clear in hindsight. He has been a leading apologist for Mubarak and Islam for decades. He has been a bureaucrat and an isolated aristocrat his entire life. He had no idea about the intensity of the protest movement that was growing on Facebook or their plans. Boutros-Ghali’s expertise is limited to the UN and government power brokers. The Arab Street is as alien to him as a Kosher Chinese restaurant in Flatbush. Probably more so.
No Copt family in Egypt has had a more access to the halls of power in Cairo than Boutros-Ghali’s – and that story is well over a century old.
Boutros-Ghali’s grandfather Boutros Ghali (1846-1910) was the prime minister of Egypt when he was assassinated by a Muslim terrorist named Ibrahim Nassif al Wardani. Historian John Marlowe wrote in his 1964 book A History of Modern Egypt and Anglo-Egyptian Relations, 1800-1956 that al Wardani “belonged to a secret terrorist society called Tadaman.” Marlow also writes about other murders committed by the Tadaman terrorists.
Boutros-Ghali mentions his grandfather in his WSJ piece. He writes: “Beginning with the appointment of my grandfather as prime minister over a century ago, my family has been privileged to hold positions of high office as part of a proud tradition of Coptic public service.” In order to make his point he conveniently leaves out the brutal murder of his own grandfather.
In writing about the bombing Boutros-Ghali wrote “the intention was surely… to sow discord between Muslims and Christians in a country long known for its religious tolerance.”
What religious tolerance is that? The Egyptian Jewish community is nearly non-existent.
On January 31, 2011 his nephew Youssef Boutros Ghali, Mubarak’s finance minister, was fired by Mubarak despite his apparent competence. No doubt precisely because he is not a Muslim. On April 30 Youssef Boutros Ghali, who fled Egypt after Mubarak’s fall, was charged with corruption and Egyptian authorities and Interpol to assist in his capture.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s contention that Egypt “has been historically an anchor of pluralism” should have been enough to cause the editors at WSJ to reject the article.
In 2002 the ADL reported that the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion “Emerge(d) as Key Theme (on an) Egyptian TV Series.” There had been numerous other examples of similar things throughout Mubarak’s rule.
The Wall Street Journal showed a real lapse in editorial judgment when they published the op-ed by Boutros-Ghali. Instead of praising the so-called “Arab Spring” the mainstream media should have been sending warning signs.
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