Evangelicals and the Middle East

Rod Dreher (a Catholic) has an interesting piece at NRO today on the strong support for Israel found among the American Evangelical community.

Of great interest to me was Dreher's discussion at the end of the article of the plight of Palestinian Christians (no, not all Palestinians or Arabs are Muslim). The following quote is especially poignant: "Suzan Sahori lives in the Christian village of Beit Sahour, east of Bethlehem. NRO reached her yesterday as her town was literally being taken over by Israeli troops. Speaking frantically over her cell phone, Sahori said, "The situation is very bad. We feel abandoned in this moment. I don't care whether you're Protestant, Latin, Orthodox, whatever you are. We're human beings!"".

I fear that the abhorrent actions of militant Muslims in the Palestinian/Arab-Israel conflict has hidden from too many Americans the plight of innocent Palestinians (which most of the Christian Palestinians are), and so we (rightly) support the right of Israel to defend itself (whether that is what is going now on is a separate question as seen by President Bush's remarks yesterday) and we (wrongly) ignore the situation of innocent Palestinians (as Tony Adragna noted last night, "most Palestinians aren't out in the streets fighting against the IDF, but are just trying to stay alive while the IDF and the PA slug it out."