Maronite Christians of Lebanon Too Fear the Fall of Syrian Regime

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/03/maronite-patriarch-arab-spring-turning-to-winter.html

The Obama administration and its EU dhimmi allies continue on the path of dismantling any Middle Eastern government that is not run by Islamist thought and laws. Maronite Catholics of Lebanon, who have long suffered under persecution by Muslims of all sorts dynasties, fear the West-enforced overthrow of yet another regime, this time Syria,  that at least made some effort to keep Christian from being sacked on a regular basis (In that nation).

"Violence and bloodshed is turning the “Arab Spring” into winter, the head of Lebanon’s Maronite Church said, threatening Christians and Muslims alike across the Middle East.

Patriarch Beshara al-Rai, whose Maronite Church also has a strong presence in Syria, said change could not be brought to the Arab world by force and that Christians feared the turmoil was helping extremist Muslim groups.

“We are with the Arab Spring but we are not with this spring of violence, war, destruction and killing. This is turning to winter,” Rai told Reuters in Bkirki, seat of the Maronite church in hills overlooking the Mediterranean Sea north of Beirut."......

“How can it be an Arab Spring when people are being killed every day?” he said. “They speak of Iraq and democracy, and one million Christians out of an original 1.5 million have fled Iraq.”

The patriarch said all communities in the Middle East were threatened by “war and violence, economic and security crises”, but Christians were particularly vulnerable because of their relatively small and dwindling numbers.

Maronites, who have a presence in Lebanon, Syria and Cyprus, follow an Eastern rite of the Roman Catholic church and number about 900,000 in Lebanon, around a quarter of the population."

Maronites have suffered terribly throught the centuries. Their treatment at the hands of the declining Ottomans and their all-too-willing accomplices, such as the Druze, is another rarely-told story. The Left, having no stomach for sovereign nations or peoples, revels in extolling the virtues of the tolerant Ottomans. Leftists often cite the Ottoman Empire as a prime example of how the Middle East should be. They would prefer that all nations either succumb to one-world government or, barring that, be brought into regional governments that will control as many of the masses as possible. Here are two examples of how Ottoman rule worked out for the Maronites:

http://phoenicia.org/maronites.html

http://greekturkish.18.forumer.com/a/the-persecution-of-maronites-under-ottoman-rule_post5894.html

They have also suffered terribly under the Syrian occupation and Syria's willingness to let Islamic terrorists run free in their country since the 70s and 80s. The Christians, once a majority, have been largely run out of town.

Note that the Maronites, as shown on the first link with the word "Phoenecia" , generally do not refer to themselves as Arabs. Like the Copts of Egypt, the vast majority of Lebanese Christians are descended from the original/indigenous  inhabitants of their respective nations. When Yasser Arafat, reaching for another angle in his quest to justify Palestinian claims to Israel, claimed that Palestinians are descended from Phoenecians and other Semitic peoples of the Levant prior to the arrival of the Hebrews, he was weakly trying to distance his group from that of the Arab conquerors. Leftists, in their own quest to negate any group's sense of identity, have often unfairly derided the position of the Maronites and others and go out of their way to argue, with no scientific proof, that the Lebanese are Arabs. The Left, like Islam, cannot tolerate a people being able to stake a claim to their ancestry or homeland.

The Arab Spring will truly result in a Christian Winter.