A Holy Week atrocity

Sadly this latest attack on two Coptic Christian churches in Egypt on Palm Sunday — the start of Holy Week — were all too predictable.

The twin blasts claimed at least 47 lives and injured scores more. And it didn’t take long for the Islamic State to claim responsibility for the latest in a too-long list of attacks on the Christian community in a country where Christians make up about 10 percent of the population.

These attacks follow a suicide bombing at a Cairo church in December that took at least 28 lives and a series of targeted killings in the northern Sinai in February that caused many to flee the region. The Sinai generally has become a virtual free-fire zone.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, who came to power in 2013 afterthe military oustedthe Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi, was a recent guest at the White House — after years of being excluded by President Obama. But the problem with el-Sissi isn’t just that he’s a strongman, whose first impulse after the Sunday blasts was to try to restrict news media coverage of them. The problem is that he’s not very good at it. The Christian community has been a vocal supporter of el-Sissi and yet he seems either unable or unwilling to protect them in return. Now he has declared a threemonth “state of emergency” although it’s unclear how much more power he could assume for himself that he doesn’t already have. Yesterday President Trump expressed confidence in el-Sissi’s commitment to protect “Christians and all Egyptians.” We wish

we could be that optimistic.