Marine Le Pen is in Lebanon to present her "recipe" to save Middle Eastern Christian communities whose condition has become more and more ground to geopolitical operations. A strategy in which also Trump and Putin, Fillon and Macron, among others, are taking part.
The list of candidates who proclaim themselves as "protectors of the Christians" lengthens. The latest to join is Marine Le Pen, National Front's candidate in the French presidential, that during her brief and now over visit to Lebanon, meticulously calibrated her words and gestures to reintroduce herself on the electoral scene also as a defender of Christian communities in the Middle Orient.
During the two days spent in the former French protectorate, the extreme right wing candidate for the Elysée met with President Michel Aoun and the leaders of the main Christian parties. She last-minute cancelled her visit to the Grand Mufti of Lebanon, Abdel Latif Derian, refusing to wear the veil that had been given to her, to show up instead to the meeting with the High Representative of Sunni Islam. She cordially chatted with the Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, during her visit to the patriarchal see of Bkerké and, after meeting with Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, Aoun's son and leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, she also outlined "her" recipe for addressing the problems of the Middle Eastern Christian communities.
In her premise, she stated that the first way of helping Middle Eastern Christians is to "wipe out Islamic radicalism," while avoiding the hemorrhage of Middle Eastern baptized from their lands by introducing wrong policies. She cited as a negative example Nicolas Sarkozy, who in her opinion urged Middle Eastern Christians "to leave their country and go live abroad as refugees."
An eventuality that Le Pen has branded as "dangerous" for Christians in the Middle East, who will be in fact subjected to the anti-immigration policy, her workhorse in the campaign to conquer the Elysee. "I want Christians of the Middle East,” the National Front leader concluded "to live in peace and serenity in their countries."
The Lebanese campaign has consecrated the official entry of Marine Le Pen in the already crowded club of global and regional political leaders committed to claim themselves as defensores christianorum. While at the end of January in France, also former French economy minister Emmanuel Macron, an "independent" candidate in the upcoming presidential elections, in an interview with a Lebanese newspaper had laid claim to France for "ensuring that Eastern Christians’ interests are defended ", while rejecting the argument that the only" guarantee" for the survival of Christian communities in Syria was that President Bashar Assad stayed in power. Macron's words were read as a direct response to some statements by Francois Fillon, also a candidate at the Elysee, who last November had pointed out the current Syrian regime as a guarantee of survival for the local Christian communities, arguing that if in Syria, "the Sunnis come to power, Christians end up with a suitcase or in a coffin.
In recent times, the world power that before any other country claimed its role as guarantor of the local Christian community in the Middle East was Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Last January 25, speaking at the 25th edition of the International Christmas Festival of Education in Kremlin, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov raised once again the alarm over the "cruel suffering" inflicted to Christian communities of the region, criticizing the European Union of "eluding the discussion concerning the problems of Christians in the Middle East, hiding under the infamous mask' of politically correctness''.
In early February, a delegation of Russian parliamentarians visited Syria and had meetings with the Heads of Churches and local monastic community. During the visit to the Orthodox Monastery of the Mother of God, in Saydnaya, the Igumena Febronia let Russian politicians known that the nuns of the community pray "for the prosperity of Russia and for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s health "
The Russian Orthodox Church has always supported Putin’s military intervention in Syria making explicit reference to the need to defend and protect also the Syrian Christians. Moscow Patriarch Kirill has repeatedly called a "Holy War" the military struggle against Jihadi forces, raising critical comments from the Middle Eastern bishops: "To speak of" Holy War "- Syrian Catholic Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo once remarked - are the jihadists themselves. What is the difference between us and them If we use their own words? Similar expressions just end up confirming their murderous ideology. "
In recent times, along with Putin, senior members of the Moscow Patriarchate have referred to the necessary mobilization in defense of the Middle Eastern Christians as a way to express their overflowing enthusiasm for the neo-USA President Donald Trump. "If the United States stop doing politics in the Middle East like a bull in a china shop," Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate said in a recent television interview "I hope for the end of the 10-year long genocide of Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities in the Middle East. " In the same speech, Hilarion has also glorified the "religious spirit" of the new US President’s inauguration.
Donald Trump, last January 27, interviewed by a television network of the Christian Broadcasting Network, founded by American TV-preacher Pat Robertson, recognized as his "priority" the granting of legal status of refugee to the category of "persecuted Christians" in the same hour in which he tried to introduce the executive order that close US borders to citizens of seven countries with an Islamic majority.
Several wannabe "protectors of Middle Eastern Christians" around the world, despite the discrepancies, in some cases striking, of their geo-political and cultural affiliations, when they mention the suffering of the Middle Eastern Christian communities often resort to the same stereotypes and fake quantitative data, posted on the internet by what are considered real stations whose intention is to spread disinformation concerning "persecutionism" and relaunched without any verification, even by official representatives of authoritative institutions. A phenomenon denounced on several occasions by many of the same Middle Eastern Christians, overwhelmed at first by the seizures that disrupt their countries.
"The atrocities of the war," told recently to Fides, Father Jacques Murad, Syrian monk of the Deir Mar Musa Community, seized for five months by the jihadists of the Islamic State, "have inflicted torments to all communities, to people of all faiths. The first Daesh victims were Sunni Muslims. In this sense, I consider inappropriate to say that there is an ongoing "genocide" of Christians in the Middle East. " "Christian communities living in those lands from the beginning of Christianity have been certainly affected" Father Jacques noted, "but it is not right, if not inconvenient to present Christians as the only victims of the war, this would only increase sectarianism. "
