Massacre a peaceful people… Is that just a matter of opinion?

Professor Dr. Michel Abs

Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC)

Once again, I find myself compelled to address the same issue: the rotating genocide taking place in the Antiochian Levant.

Since the end of the Industrial Revolution, and the subsequent First World War—which led to the industrialized West dividing up the legacy of the “Sick Man”, this ill-fated region has seen the arrival of various missions, the most cunning and dangerous of which was the King-Crane Commission. In parallel, treaties carved up this area, fragmenting it further—most famously Sykes-Picot—so that our peoples have known neither stability nor peace, even though we are the Land of Peace, where the Lord of Peace was incarnated, the Light from Light.

Colonizers sat around conference tables—better described as conspiracy tables—drawing lines lengthwise and crosswise, which later became political borders for a nation shattered into scattered remnants of peoples. As if conspiracy were not enough, they went on to create an artificial entity and tasked it with exterminating the native inhabitants of the land, just as they had done on the continents they had colonized. Thus began wars of extermination and tragedies in a place they call the Cradle of Civilizations.

If we must give this region a modern name, we could call it the “Zone of Roaming Murder.”

The elements of the tragedy became clearer after the Second World War, when Palestine was partitioned, and a racist state was established there. This created hostility between a segment of our peoples who share that state’s religion and the rest of the population with whom they had lived for more than two thousand years.

That first tragedy in the Antiochian Levant—leading to countless other calamities—was only the initial stage of what has been planned, and continues to be planned, for this region, where all the world’s political disasters seem to converge.

The war of Palestine, through the massive displacement of its people, eventually led, after a period of time, to a disruption of social and political balance in Lebanon. This caused Lebanon to erupt and endure internal wars for a decade and a half. When Lebanon’s tragedy finally subsided, Iraq had already slipped down the slope of a world war scaled to the region. It suffered a devastating blockade before being invaded by the very same forces involved in that blockade. To this day, it still suffers the consequences, and no one knows when this ordeal will end.

Meanwhile, a ferocious war ignited in the Bilad Al Cham (Syria), destroying and depopulating entire areas and unsettling its social and economic balances, casting this once-flourishing entity into the unknown.

After that, war ignited once again in Palestine in 2023, then spread to Lebanon in 2024. No sooner had the situation relatively calmed in Lebanon than war flared up again in northern Syria, and so on it continues.

Is all this coincidence?

It is a plan of destruction and roaming killings! Each country has its role and its share of destruction, displacement, and misery.

Is it a coincidence that within two decades the Antiochian Levant has turned into a nation of camp dwellers? Is it a coincidence that these once-thriving countries and societies have been reduced to debt, poverty, and displacement?

All this is part of a meticulously crafted scheme by military and economic criminals, concocted in dark underground rooms to seize this region and, through it, the Arab world. What was called the “Arab Spring” was merely part of this plan.

The peaceful people of our region, who have been subjected to terror and massacres for more than a century, are guilty of nothing except living in a place coveted by greed. But this place is their homeland, and they will not leave it. They will defend their existence until the end of time.

They promise us peace while preparing for war. Sadly, all those who perpetrate wars in our region will not be around when history calls them to account. We have only the justice of heaven to give us justice.

He the Highest, the Almighty, who knows what is hidden, He the Holy One, He is the best Guardian and Trustee.