Righteous effort rescues Christians in Middle East

Christianity, whose presence in the Middle East predates Islam’s by 600 years, is about to be cleansed from the Middle East. Egyptian Copts may have found some respite under Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, but they know how precarious their existence in 90 percent Muslim Egypt is. Elsewhere, it’s worse. Twenty-one Copts were beheaded by the Islamic State affiliate in Libya for being Christian. In those large swaths of Syria and Iraq where the Islamic State rules, the consequences for Christians are terrible — enslavement, exile, torture, massacre, crucifixion.

Over the decades, many Middle Eastern Christians, seeing the rise of political Islam and the intensification of savage sectarian wars, have left. Lebanon’s Christians, once more than half the population, are now about a third. The number of Christians under Palestinian rule in the West Bank has dwindled. (The exception, of course, is Israel, where Christians, Arab and non-Arab, enjoy not just protection but civil rights. Their numbers are increasing.)

Most endangered are the Christians of Syria. Four years ago they numbered 1.1 million. By now 700,000 have fled. Many of those remaining are caught either under radical Islamist rule or in the crossfire between factions.

Meanwhile, on a more limited scale, there are things that can be done. Three weeks ago, for example, 150 Syrian Christians were airlifted to refuge and safety in Poland.

That’s the work of the Weidenfeld Safe Havens Fund. It provided the flight and will support the refugees for as long as 18 months as they try to remake their lives.

The person behind all this is Lord George Weidenfeld: philanthropist, publisher, founder of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue to promote classically liberal European values, lifelong Zionist and, as he will delightedly tell you, the last person to fight a duel at the University of Vienna — with sabers, against a Nazi. (No one died.)

Remarkably healthy and energetic (as distant cousins, we are often in touch), Weidenfeld, 95, appears nowhere near any exit doors. But he is deeply troubled by the doors closing in on a community in Syria largely abandoned by the world.

In context, the scale of the initial rescue is tragically small. The objective is to rescue 2,000 families. Compared to the carnage in Syria wrought by the pitiless combatants, it’s a paltry sum. But these are real people who will be saved. And for Weidenfeld, that counts.

Yet he has been criticized for rescuing just Christians. In fact, the U.S. government will not participate because the rescue doesn’t extend to Yazidis, Druze or Shiites.

It’s a rather odd view that because he cannot do everything, he should be admonished for trying to do something. With so few doing so little for so many, he’s doing what he can.

And for him, it’s personal. In 1938, still a teenager, he was brought from Vienna to London where the Plymouth Brethren provided for him.

He is trying to repay the good that Christians did for him 77 years ago. In doing so, he is not just giving hope and a new life to 150 souls, soon to be thousands. He has struck a blow for something exceedingly rare: simple, willful righteousness.