JERUSALEM — On Sunday, February 16, US Secretary of State, Mr. Marco Rubio, paid his first official visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Representing the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem at the welcoming ceremony were Chancellor Rev. Fr. Aghan Kokchian and former Superior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Rev. Fr. Samuel Aghoian.
“We raised the issue of the Christian presence in Israel and concerns regarding their departure. The Secretary of State noted that many Christians, including Armenians, have already left Syria, Lebanon, and other Middle Eastern countries. He assured that the U.S. would do everything possible to ensure that the Christian presence in Israel remains stable, preventing a repetition of the situation in those countries. The Secretary also expressed gratitude for our service and efforts, promising to keep the issues we raised in focus and to visit again,” stated the Chancellor of the Armenian Patriarchate.
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Since 1967, Israel has reduced the native Christian presence in Jerusalem and the Holy Land by 90%. America’s overthrow of the Syrian Arab Republic and the “brutal dictator” Bashar Assad (who, as the legacy media pundits assure us–despite all evidence to the contrary–“killed millions (?!) of his own people”) was a development that at least one of us are on record as having predicted at the start of the second American war against Iraq, more than twenty years ago. That war set the stage for the death of one million men, women, and children, and the creation of millions of refugees. For decades, the “brutal” Assad “regime” (to use the prescribed catchphrase) provided healthcare, education, and equal consideration to all Syrians, Muslim and Christian. But in the name of regime change, the USA shredded Syrian society, destroyed its defenses, and impoverished its population. The Americans did it for the same reason they destroyed Iraq and Libya–transforming the latter from the most affluent country on the African continent into a hellscape of poverty and tyranny far, far worse than what had come before it. The Americans did all of this to ensure that their surrogates in Tel Aviv would continue to exercise uncontested rule over a strategically crucial region. In Lebanon, the USA has provided billions of dollars to the “Lebanese Army”–not to defend the borders of that beautiful country from the regular murderous incursions of its neighbor to the south, but to produce a huge police and surveillance force to repress its own impoverished population. It is in the propaganda interests of Israeli leaders to extinguish the native Christians of the Middle East. And thanks to the ever-obedient “free press” in the West, they can get away with blaming it all on America’s enemies. That said, it is worse than disappointing to hear that Church leaders in Jerusalem would have humiliated themselves by consenting to meet with the likes of Marco Rubio.