by Giulio Meotti
To be fair, a mainstream media outlet reported the story this time. On February 20, a week after the attack, Newsweek published an article titled “70 Christians Beheaded in Church: What We Know,” providing key details of the story.
But otherwise, more than two weeks later, one of the most horrific attacks in history against Christians has been completely ignored by the mainstream media.
Open Doors, the leading organization that supports persecuted Christians around the world, reported that the violence in Congo perpetrated by Islamic extremists began around 4 a.m. on Thursday, February 13.
“They went door to door saying, ‘Out, out, don’t make any noise,’” said an elder from a nearby town. “Twenty Christian men and women came out and they tied them up for an unknown destination.” After the 20 were taken, the terrorists surrounded the Christian village and kidnapped 50 more people. Seventy prisoners, men, women, children and elderly people, were taken to a Protestant church in the nearby village of Kasanga, where they were beheaded with machetes. The bodies were discovered the next day.
Only one major religious leader has so far raised his voice and that is the Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Warren Goldstein:
“Seventy people, women, men and children were tied up, taken to the church and beheaded. Beyond the sheer horror of this brutality, the desecration of a church, the monstrosity and cruelty, what is truly shocking is that no one in the world seems to care. Where is the outcry? Where are the headlines? Where are the media? And the governments? And the religious leaders? Where are the Christian leaders crying out for their flock? The terrorists didn’t just murder their Christian victims, they took them to a church to behead them and to send a very clear symbolic message: that this was an act of religious warfare, Jihad, and this is not an isolated incident.
“There is a religious war across the continent against Christians in Africa and every year thousands of Christians are murdered, raped, kidnapped and beheaded for their faith, burned inside their churches across the continent, the scale of the threat is enormous. This means that African Christians are experiencing the brutality of an October 7th all the time and no one seems to care. I have not heard any global Christian leader take up this cause. Where is the World Council of Churches? Where are you? You don’t care? The United Nations doesn’t care? I am a rabbi, why am I the only one raising the plight of Christians?.”
I would have liked to hear as much moral and religious clarity from a bishop on October 7th. Instead, there was nothing.
Anyone who wants visual information on this never-ending slaughter in Africa should go to the website of Memri, the Middle East Media Research Institute, the study center founded by the Israeli analyst Yigal Carmon. They are chilling images, of fields where heads are sawed off, small churches of burned mud and straw, hogtied and mutilated Christians.
“Why is the world silent as Christians are being massacred in the Middle East and Africa?”, wrote in the New York Times Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress. “In Europe and the United States, there have been demonstrations to protest the tragic deaths of Palestinian Arabs who were used as human shields by Hamas. The United Nations has investigated and focused its anger on Israel for defending itself from that same terrorist organization. But the barbaric slaughter of thousands upon thousands of Christians has been met with relative indifference.”
Less than a week after 70 Christians were beheaded by terrorists in the Congo, the Chicago City Council has decided to stand up for African victims of Islamic terrorism and modern slavery. It is the first American political group to take such a stand. The effort to bring the issue of the jihadist massacre to a major American city has been led by a coalition of human rights groups: the African Jewish Alliance, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and StandWithUs, all Jewish organizations.
A book by Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbi Abraham Cooper is titled “The Next Jihad: Stop the Christian Genocide in Africa.”
The voices calling out against the genocide of Christians are more Jewish than Christian. A paradox that tells us a lot about the state of abandonment of the West.
French journalist Christine Kelly is very good at writing about the massacre of the 70 in the Journal du dimanche and warns:
“Let’s stop turning a blind eye to the violence suffered by Christians. Every week in France, churches are looted. These buildings, witnesses to our heritage, our faith, our history, are looted without anyone lifting a finger. What’s worse is that we make these acts invisible. Shut up. Don’t say anything.
“Who talks about the atrocities in Africa in universities? Who demonstrates? Who talks about it on TV? Who talks about it in the European Parliament? The European Commission has not yet appointed a European coordinator to combat Christianophobia. I have seen videos of indescribable horror in which human beings are burned alive in the middle of the street without anyone intervening to help them”.
Meanwhile, Europe lights up its cities with crescents for Ramadan. But it’s pitch black out there.
Only a brave rabbi denounced the killings of Christians in Congo | Israel National News