Christians, Jews Team Up to Fight Islamic Persecution

By Julie Stahl and Chris Mitchell

CBN News Middle East Bureau

Saturday, October 18, 2014

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JERUSALEM, Israel -- As stories of new beheadings of Christian children in Iraq come to light, many wonder - who will speak out against it?

Now Jews and Christians are banding together to fight growing persecution of Christians in Islamic countries.

"When hundreds of thousands of Christians - men, women and children - are killed, this isn't a war, this is genocide. And Jews know what happens when the world is silent to genocide," World Jewish Congress President Ron Lauder told participants at the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem's annual Feast of Tabernacles celebration in Jerusalem.

Lauder advocates for Jewish people around the world. Now he's teaming up with the ICEJ and Empowered21 to fight Christian persecution.

"What's happened to the Christians (is) they're being massacred and killed," Lauder told CBN News in an interview. "Some 120,000 were killed last year and no one says anything. Everyone's focusing on Gaza now and the fact is the world is coming apart."

The WJC, Empowered21 and the ICEJ sent a letter recently to more than 100 world leaders calling on them to take up the cause of persecuted Christians in Muslim countries. Together, the three groups represent millions around the world.

ICEJ Executive Director Jurgen Buhler told journalists, "For the first time to my knowledge in modern history, probably even in the history of Jewish-Christian relations, a Jewish organization and a Christian organization are joining in a letter to protect Christians in the Middle East." 
 
"There has simply been a horrendous thing that has been going on. Christianity is dwindling in the Middle East. We believe it should be growing," Oral Roberts University President Billy Wilson, co-chairman of Empowered21 Global Council, told CBN News.

Canon Andrew White, known as the Vicar of Baghdad, said ISIS beheaded 30 more children on Saturday who refused to convert to Islam.

"The children said, 'We have always followed Yesua [Arabic]. We will never leave Yesua.' They all had their heads chopped off. This is the kind of terror that we are facing," White told journalists.

Lauder encouraged more than 4,000 Christians from 80 nations at the Feast of Tabernacles celebration to fight together.

In Paul's second letter to Timothy, he wrote that God did not give us a spirit of fear but the spirit of power," Lauder told Christian pilgrims at the feast.

"Do not fear. Have courage. Have strength and as one, Christians and Jews, we will be strengthened together and we will, we will not fail," he said.