The Most Surprising Thing Persecuted Christians Need? - CBN News

The Most Surprising Thing Persecuted Christians Need?

CBNNews.com

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

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Last year was the worst year for persecuted Christians in contemporary history as beatings, rapes, kidnappings, and killings all increased.

The situation has only worsened in 2015. Even Christian-majority countries are seeing increases in discrimination, exclusion, and violence.

The advancement of the Islamic State group and totalitarian governments like North Korea has contributed to the rise in persecution.

November 1 marks the annual International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. In preparation Open Doors USA is hosting a live webcast, Friday, October 30, from 5 to 7 p.m. PT (8 p.m.-10 p.m. ET).

CBN News will livestream the webcast at CBNNews.com.

During the live webcast, Open Doors USA will provide expert commentary and give viewers the chance to ask questions of persecuted Christians from Iraq and Kenya through a live chat.

There will also be a rare interview with a North Korean woman who spent several years in a prison camp for her faith in Christ.

According to Open Doors President and CEO David Curry, the greatest need expressed by the persecuted may surprise most American Christians.

"Time and time again, those living under persecution and those who are refugees from it tell us that their greatest need is hope--hope found in their faith and hope born of the knowledge that Christians in the free world are remembering them in prayer," Curry said.

For more than 60 years, Open Doors has worked in the world's most oppresive countries, providing bibles, training prayer and support for persecuted Christians.

"We need to be praying every day for the persecuted church. We need to take action to find where your passion lies and connect in ways to serve the persecuted church like you've never done before. I believe, I really believe that this is going to be the issue that we're really challenged with in the next decade," Curry said.

You can also join the webcast by logging on to CBNNews.com on Friday, Oct. 30.

From the Middle East to Nigeria, from the U.S. to Germany, Christians across the globe are standingin the face of persecution. Here are some of their stories:

Unafraid of ISIS, Iraqi Girl's Faith Beyond Viral 

ISIS has brutalized, raped, and murdered thousands. But the unshakeable faith of young Maryam Behnam, who had to flee from the terrorist group, has encouraged Christians in Iraq and around the world.

Miracle Survivors Tell of Boko Haram's Unspeakable 'Evil'

As ISIS continues to grab the global spotlight, Boko Haram operates under the radar, seizing parts of Nigeria. Those fortunate to survive their wrath testify to unspeakable horrors.

Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis Goes Free. What's Next?

Six days after a judge threw Kim Davis in jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, the Kentucky county clerk woke up a free woman Wednesday morning.

'Brave German Woman' Rebukes Islam's Lie

Islam continues to grow in power and influence across Europe. But in Germany one Christian woman has decided to stand up and declare Christ alone as Lord over her country.

Widow's Joy: He Didn't Deny Christ When Beheaded

The amazing response of the Egyptian Christians whose loved ones were recently beheaded by ISIS has inspired a solidarity movement for those suffering for Christ in the Middle East.

Israel and the Palestinians - THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

Israel and the Palestinians slide deeper into conflict

Stabbing attacks are multiplying, PA security forces are shrinking away in the West Bank, the IDF is getting more deeply involved and more Palestinians are joining the clashes.

BY AVI ISSACHAROFF October 9, 2015  THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

WRITERS

Avi Issacharoff, The Times of Israel's Middle East analyst, 

fills the same role for Walla, the leading portal in Israel. … [More]

RELATED TOPICS
ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT
WEST BANK
PALESTINIAN TERRORISM
MORE ON THIS STORY
At Jerusalem stabbing site, protest tent marks new status quo
Israel may outlaw far-right Lehava organization
Abbas trying to quell violence — Israeli security officials
PM to Abbas: Stop the incendiary speeches about Temple Mount
Leading rabbi: Jewish visitors to Temple Mount sparked tensions
Jordan slams Israel for Palestinian deaths, urges world intervention
At least 6 Palestinians die in clash with IDF along Gaza border
Israelis buy pepper spray, sign up to self-defense courses as stabbing attacks surge
Attempted Afula stabber identified as Nazareth woman
Settler leader’s family hurt in West Bank crash as car pelted with rocks


The events of the last few days show a deeply alarming trend: Three or more Palestinians, mostly East Jerusalemites, are daily attacking Israelis — knowing that they are likely to die in the attempt. These are a kind of suicide attacks. They are far less devastating than the bus and restaurant and market bombings of the Second Intifada, but they are motivated by the assailants’ desire to become martyrs. The upsurge of these kinds of attacks is all the more disquieting given that the overwhelming majority of them are not organized by a terror group or known orchestrator, but rather are carried out by “lone wolf” terrorists.

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This simply didn’t happen at this kind of rate during the Second Intifada. At its height, in the spring of 2002, that strategic onslaught of terrorism was producing horrific suicide bombings every few days. But today, we have entered an almost surreal reality of attack after attack every day, mostly carried out by young Palestinians (mostly, but not only male) with no known previous involvement in terrorism, willing to kill and to die “for Jerusalem” and “for al-Aqsa.”


Is the day drawing near when one of the terrorist organizations will try to initiate a Second Intifada-style suicide bombing inside Israel? For now, at least, there is no intelligence information indicating this. But that does not mean no such plans exist.

Hamas does not want to declare all-out war against Israel, and to completely destroy its relations with the Palestinian Authority. Therefore, it apparently will not initiate this kind of attack. The same can be said of Fatah’s well-armed Tanzim forces. But it may well be that within Islamic Jihad, with the encouragement of the Iranians, there may be those who will — if only to “steal the show” and show up the “paralysis” of the rival terror groups.

Even without these kinds of bombings, the relentless daily attacks are sowing fear and deep disquiet among Israelis. This is a kind of assault not previously encountered. The closest precedent was a rash of knifings in 1990, on a much smaller scale, also motivated by concern for ostensible threats to the al-Aqsa Mosque.

Part of Israelis’ concerns stem from uncertainty: what exactly are we facing, and how is it going to develop? It’s not (yet) a popular uprising. In the Palestinian twittersphere, some are calling it the “al-Quds Intifada” — the Jerusalem uprising — much like the al-Aqsa Intifada of 15 years ago. But that’s just what would-be opinion-shapers are branding it. Are we truly entering a Third Intifada? It’s still hard to say with any certainty. Something has clearly shifted, however, and things are unlikely to revert to the way they were. The status quo that has prevailed since 2007, rooted in close coordination between the Israeli and PA security hierarchies, is coming to an end.
Uncomfortable meeting

The crack, or possibly the rift, in security ties between Israel and the PA is not official, and may not be irreversible. Nobody on the Palestinian side has formally declared that coordination is over. Quite the opposite. PA President Mahmoud Abbas is ostensibly maintaining it. His security chiefs met with their Israeli counterparts this week, despite all the problematics and sensitivities of such a meeting at a time like this.

Word of the meeting leaked out, and the PA promptly denied that it had taken place, claiming that it had rebuffed an Israeli invitation to meet. In fact, according to an Israeli source, PA officials — including Nidal Abu-Dahan, the head of PA National Security, Intelligence chief Majed Faraj and Preventive Security chief Ziad Habalreeh — discussed ways to calm the situation with their Israeli counterparts. The PA officials emphatically did not announce an end to the coordination, or any plans for such a rupture.

In fact, earlier this week, PA security officials safely extracted Israeli solders who had entered PA territory by mistake, and also carried out a series of more than 20 arrests among Hamas activists.

But the PA security chiefs did, nonetheless, convey a sense of disquiet to the Israelis. What they were wondering was, what happens next? As in, if they help calm the situation, and thwart the upsurge in attacks, what will the Israeli government do for the PA? Faraj, who is regarded as particularly close to Abbas, was one of the officials making this concern clear, the source said.

Israeli suggestions to withdraw forces from certain areas, and allow the PA to deploy there, were met with hesitancy. For instance, there was talk of the PA placing forces at the northern entrance to Ramallah, across from the IDF’s Judea and Samaria HQ. The Israelis pointed out that it was an affront to the PA for Palestinian youths, including Hamas supporters, to be running riot so close to the PA’s own West Bank capital. But the PA officials were disinclined to act decisively to completely douse a fire they feel was started by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers surrounding al-Aqsa.

There was also talk of encouraging a greater Jordanian role regarding the contested holy site, specifically for King Abdullah to reassert a more direct role in the oversight of the Muslim holy places there. Such a move, it was thought, might constitute another de-escalating step, to follow up on Netanyahu’s ban on MKs and ministers, Jewish and Muslim, from visiting the site.

In truth, however, another reason for the PA security chiefs’ hesitation was that most of the demonstrations taking place in West Bank cities in recent days and weeks have been organized by Fatah activists, not senior Fatah officials directed by Abbas, but Fatah and Tanzim figures some of whom are close to the leadership and some of whom directly work in the Fatah bureaucracy. The PA security apparatuses have no interest in entering into confrontations with these people. And the absence of the PA forces was indeed conspicuous this week during clashes in Bethlehem, Tulkarem and Ramallah.

This may also explain the dramatic rise in the numbers participating in these protests and clashes. Now, hundreds are gathering — 10 times as many as was the case a mere two or three weeks ago.

Fatah wants to play a role in the confrontation against Israel, in part so as no to lose more of the Palestinian street to Hamas. All this unsurprisingly hinders Israeli-PA security coordination. And that’s not about to change.

The bottom line: The PA forces no longer can, and no longer want to, do what they were doing a few short weeks ago.

A case in point: Three days ago, gunmen from Ramallah opened fire at an IDF command post in Beit El. These were Fatah-Tanzim gunmen. The PA security forces told them to desist, but it is unlikely that this order will be heeded for long.
Abbas’s thinking

It may be that the current situation has its perceived benefits for Abbas. He’s not ripping up relations with Israel altogether, and he is not directly responsible for the deteriorating situation. But the escalation is producing so much anxiety in Israel that, Abbas may be calculating, Netanyahu may resort to widening his coalition, to bring in the center-left National Union, and perhaps even freezing settlement construction.

In this context, Abbas’s insistent refusal to condemn the terror attacks is telling. In the past, he did condemn all attacks and bloodshed. This time, he has been silent, and his Fatah colleagues have been hailing and praising the attacks.

The breach between Israel and Abbas, as reflected in his speech to the UN General Assembly last week, was followed, predictably, by the planned dispatch by Abbas of a delegation to Gaza to discuss a unity government with Hamas, except that Hamas refused to host Abbas’s emissaries.

Again, it is not impossible that this new wave of terror will be calmed for a while. But the fundamental causes will remain. The coals will keep burning unless or until there is a substantive diplomatic process — even in the highly unlikely event that the specific issue of al-Aqsa is effectively addressed.

For now, the cycle of violence is well and truly in motion: Palestinian attacks, in some cases bringing Jewish “revenge” attacks, and more Palestinian attacks, and wider Palestinian demonstrations, with a rising insistence by Fatah that it play a role. The PA security forces shrink away. The IDF has to intervene more directly — as in this week’s operation by undercover forces near Beit El. And the deterioration accelerates.

Last weekend, after the terror attack near Itamar in which Naama and Eitam Henkin were gunned down in front of their children, some 40 incidents of Jewish attacks on Palestinians were reported. That constitutes a portent of what could unfold during the olive-picking season, which is now getting under way. Each week’s Friday prayers constitute another event that potentially widens Palestinian participation in protest and violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank.


In a classic Catch-22, each new Palestinian terror attack prompts pressure on the government to cancel work permits for tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians in Israel and for the imposition of a closure on the territories — as Zionist Union’s Isaac Herzog, of all people, urged on Thursday. Such a step would likely be disastrous, and would probably mean that rather than 3,000 Palestinians participating in West Bank protests against the IDF, we would see 30,000 or more.

At which point, any attempt to halt a popular uprising would become almost impossible.

Kenya university attack: Christian student hostages shot on spot

• AP
• APRIL 03, 2015
• 
  

Al-Shabaab Claims Attack on Kenyan College

The Islamic extremists who slaughtered 147 people in a Kenyan school appeared to have planned extensively, even targeting a site where Christians had gone to pray, a survivor has claimed.

The masked attackers — strapped with explosives and armed with AK-47s — singled out non-Muslim students at Garissa University College and then gunned them down without mercy, survivors said. Others ran for their lives with bullets whistling through the air.

Amid the massacre, the men took dozens of hostages in a dormitory as they battled troops and police before the operation ended after about 13 hours, witnesses said.

One of the first things that the al-Shabab gunmen did, survivor Helen Titus said, was to head for a lecture hall where Christians were in early morning prayer.

“They investigated our area. They knew everything,” Titus told The Associated Press at a hospital in Garissa where she was being treated for a bullet wound to the wrist. Titus, a 21-year-old English literature student, said she covered her face and hair with the blood of classmates and lay still at one point during the attack, in the hope the Islamic extremist gunmen would think she was dead.

The gunmen also told students hiding in dormitories to come out, assuring them that they would not be killed, said Titus.

“We just wondered whether to come out or not,” she said. Many students did, whereupon the gunmen started shooting men, saying they would not kill “ladies,” Titus said. But they also shot women and targeted Christians, said Titus, who is a Christian.

Four militants were slain by security forces to end the siege just after dusk.

Police were today at the campus of Garissa University College, taking fingerprints from the bodies of the four assailants and of the students and security officials who died.

When gunfire from the Kenyan security forces struck the attackers, the militants exploded “like bombs,” Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery said, adding that the shrapnel wounded some of the officers.

Al-Shabab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage said fighters from the Somalia-based extremist group were responsible. The al-Qa’ida-linked group has been blamed for a series of attacks in Kenya, including the siege at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in 2013 that killed 67 people, as well as other violence in the north. The group has vowed to retaliate against Kenya for sending troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight the militants staging cross-border attacks.

Most of the 147 dead were students, but two security guards, one policeman and one soldier also were killed in the attack, Nkaissery said.

At least 79 people were wounded at the campus 145 kilometres from the Somali border, he said. Some of the more seriously wounded were flown to Nairobi for treatment.

Officials at the Australian High Commission in Kenya’s capital Nairobi are working to determine whether any Australians have been hurt in a university massacre.

A dusk-to-dawn curfew was ordered in Garissa and three nearby counties.

One suspected extremist was arrested as he tried to flee, Nkaissery told a news conference in Nairobi.

Police identified a possible mastermind of the attack as Mohammed Mohamud, who is alleged to lead al-Shabab’s cross-border raids into Kenya, and they posted a $220,000 bounty for him. Also known by the names Dulyadin and Gamadhere, he was a teacher at an Islamic religious school, or madrasah, and claimed responsibility for a bus attack in Makka, Kenya, in November that killed 28 people.

One of the survivors of Thursday’s attack, Collins Wetangula, told The Associated Press he was preparing to take a shower when he heard gunshots coming from Tana dorm, which hosts both men and women, 150 meters away. The campus has six dorms and at least 887 students, he said.

When he heard the gunshots, he locked himself and three roommates in their room, said Wetangula, who is vice chairman of the university’s student union.

“All I could hear were footsteps and gunshots. Nobody was screaming because they thought this would lead the gunmen to know where they are,” he said.

He added: “The gunmen were saying, ‘Sisi ni al-Shabab,"’ - Swahili for “We are al-Shabab.”

He heard the attackers arrive at his dormitory, open the doors and ask if the people who had hidden inside were Muslims or Christians.

“If you were a Christian, you were shot on the spot,” he said. “With each blast of the gun, I thought I was going to die.”

The gunmen then started shooting rapidly, as if exchanging fire, Wetangula said.

“The next thing, we saw people in military uniform through the window of the back of our rooms who identified themselves as the Kenyan military,” he said. The soldiers took him and around 20 others to safety.

The attack began about 5:30am, as morning prayers were underway at the university mosque, where worshippers were not attacked, said Augustine Alanga, a 21-year-old student.

At least five heavily armed, masked gunmen opened fire outside his dormitory, turning intense almost immediately and setting off panic, he told the AP by telephone.

The shooting kept some students indoors but scores of others fled through barbed-wire fencing around the campus, with the gunmen firing at them, he said.

“I am just now recovering from the pain as I injured myself while trying to escape, Alanga said. I was running barefoot,” Alanga said.

As terrified students streamed out of buildings, arriving police officers took cover. Kenya’s National Police Service said a “fierce shootout” ensued as police guarded the dorms.

Three dorms were evacuated as the gunmen holed up in a fourth, and Kenyan Defense Forces surrounded the campus.

“I am saddened to inform the nation that early today, terrorists attacked Garissa University College, killed and wounded several people, and have taken others hostage,” President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a speech to the nation while the siege was underway.

After the militants took hostages, fears arose over the fate of some of the students, but the National Disaster Operations Center said all were eventually accounted for.

The U.S. condemned the attack, with White House spokesman Josh Earnest saying Washington was standing with the people of Kenya, “who will not be intimidated by such cowardly attacks.” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also condemned it, reiterating his solidarity with the Kenyans “to prevent and counter terrorism and violent extremism,” his office said.

Wetangula, who was rescued by troops, said one soldier instructed a group of students to run and to dive for cover at their command as they ran to safety.

“We started running and bullets were whizzing past our heads, and the soldiers told us to dive,” Wetangula said. The soldier told students later that al-Shabab snipers were perched on a three-storey dormitory called the Elgon, he said.

Kenyatta has been under pressure to deal with insecurity caused by a string of attacks by al-Shabab.

In his speech to the country, he said he had directed the police chief to speed up the training of 10,000 police recruits because Kenya has “suffered unnecessarily due to shortage of security personnel.”

Kenya’s northern and eastern regions near the Somali border have seen many attacks blamed on al-Shabab.

Last month, al-Shabab claimed responsibility for attacks in Mandera county on the Somali border in which 12 people died.

Police said 312 people have been killed in al-Shabab attacks in Kenya from 2012 to 2014.

Last week, al-Shabab claimed responsibility for a siege at a Mogadishu hotel that left 24 people dead, including six attackers.

AP

Medics help an injured person at Kenyatta national Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, after he was airlifted from Garissa after an attack by gunmen.

A male student hostage is escorted out of Garissa University after Kenya Defence Forces ended a siege by terrorist gunmen.