YOU CAN'T HELP THEM NOW - Or can you? Mystery deepens: Where are all the Middle Eastern Christians?

Where have all the Christians gone? It's a mystery that is baffling everyone who wants to keep track of the ongoing genocide in the Middle East. Where there were once over four million Christians between Iraq and Syria, an untold number are missing. 

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - When it is said that Christians from the areas plagued by the Islamic State are missing, it must be understood that we are dealing with a population that exceeds one million in the directly affected area. The vast majority of those people are missing. Entire villages, towns, and even neighborhoods in cities such as Mosul, have been abandoned. 

It is impossible to put a good estimate on paper, and the ones that exist vary widely from lows in the tens of thousands to an incredible high that is over a million. The actual figure likely stands in the high tens of thousands with hundreds of thousands displaced or simply vanished. The figure of 700,000 is widely used as a compromise. Naturally, the Islamic State does not report its numbers and the reports we have received from survivors are of entire communities being wiped out. 

The UN also reports that the vast majority of people in refugee camps are Muslim. It appears that Christians are badly underrepresented. In the United States, a program that grants temporary asylum has admitted just 28 people from an estimated population if 700,000 displaced Christians. Over a thousand Muslims have been admitted. 

The truth is, nobody can account for where the Christians are because they have to be seen to be reported. And why can't they be seen?

Because they're under the ground. 

In a scene that has been repeated several times, one Christian survivor reported what happened in his village when the Islamic State's marauders arrived with an ultimatum: 

"They [Islamic State fighters] arrived with trucks and guns and they surrounded the village. Nobody was allowed to leave. We were told to come out of our homes and made to gather in a field on the edge of town. A man came out of a car, he spoke to us very politely and eloquently. He told us that we must convert to Islam and that we would have two days to consider. After two days, they gathered us again and asked who wanted to join with them. Nobody did. After that, they told us we would be separated, the men from the women and children. All of us men and teenage boys were divided from the women. The children were very afraid, and many tried clinging to their father's legs. These children were forcefully pulled away. Some fighters were very cruel about it, and hit the children while others picked up the children and spoke to them as if they were already their fathers.

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Most of the fighters went among us and seemed very angry. They led us around the village to another field. The whole time, they surrounded us, pointed their weapons at us and they sang and chanted as if now they were happy. They abused many of us verbally, especially the elders, which seemed to please them. 

"They ordered us to kneel in the field and many of us began to weep openly, others began to pray. I prayed too, but silently. They fighters made a half-circle around us and began shooting. They cheered as they shot more of us. They took turns shooting us, like a sport. I watched the people in front of me die to their killers' delight. The prayers gave way to moans of agony as wounded men writhed on the ground. I remember the blood spraying into the air. You could hear the air leave some of the men's mouths as they were torn by the bullets. 

"When they began to kill the men around me, I fell over. I did not plan this to happen, I just did it. I thought I was lucky, that I was shot but could not feel it, but I was not even hit. The person next to me fell on top of me, dead. In this way, I think I was saved, they mistook me for dead. I know there was much blood on me, I could feel it warm against my skin. I think twice bullets hit him again and his body moved against mine. It was very hard to stay still. 

"I lay still, very still and they went around firing more shots into us to make sure we were dead. The moaning stopped and the cheering voices turned into quiet talk. Sometimes a few of them would laugh. 

"After that, it was quiet enough, I could hear the women screaming and crying from the other side of the village. The crying was very deep, and I cannot describe it; it was deep crying, deeper than all the funerals I have been to... 

"I thought I heard them search some of the dead for hidden possessions, but I am not sure. Nobody touched me. I waited until I heard all their cars leave before I moved. I think I was the only person alive. I thought about going to where the women were to look for my mother and sister, but I heard a car and it frightened me... I walked the other direction for two days."

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What is related here is the standard practice of the Islamic State as revealed by survivors and eyewitnesses. Even fellow Muslims have been shocked by the brutality of ISIS towards Christians and Yazidis. 

Despite these brutal tactics, some Christians have escaped and they have settled in refugee camps, and in cities across Iraq and Syria. Despite their escape from the Islamic State, they still aren't safe. 

The purpose of genocide is to wipe a people out. It does not require the killing of all for it will suffice to dispel people enough that their language, culture and religion becomes extinct. Genocides are common throughout history and many have proved successful. Consider Native American genocide in the United States. Over a hundred years later, the Native American population is small, and the old traditions and ways of those ancient people are almost entirely forgotten, their rituals surviving only in books or, almost worse, as tourist attractions. There's plenty of blame to assign out for that genocide. 

Likewise, there's going to be a lot of blame for the genocide against Middle Eastern Christians. 

It isn't just the killers who are to blame, but it's also the people who did nothing to stop them. The people who had the ability to help, but they said, "I'll help later," or they turned away, more concerned about their own, relatively trivial problems than the constant life-or-death threats faced by their Christians brothers and sisters. 

Nobody deserves to die for their religious beliefs, yet every single day Christians are killed for that reason. And it isn't just the men. The women and children are killed. Women, for example, are routinely enslaved, put to worked and raped, often daily, to satisfy the sadistic impulses of their Islamic State masters. Some commit suicide, most are passed from house to house until they are killed by their last angry man, disappointed at what he bought in the market for a bargain price. Child captives are the most prized possessions, and they are subjected to pedophilia in addition to every other kind of abuse and torture their "owners" can concoct. 

The fact is, Christians are being saved only through the goodwill of others. 

Our Christian brothers and sisters need help. They need it right now, not next week, or next month, or at some indeterminate time in the future. And they need more than just prayers, they need action. 

Within a matter of weeks, the summer nights will begin to chill and turn cool. This will provide a pleasant interlude, a respite from the heat, but the people will still need clean water, food, clothing and shelter. Their faith-based needs must also be met. They want Bibles and rosaries and other items just so they can preserve their faith and pass it along to their surviving children.

After the temperatures drop, biting cold will return and it will last for months. The thin canvas walls of a refugee tent may help, but the biting cold will remain. Who can look at a shivering child with frost covering their one, thin blanket and refuse to help? Can you envision what that child's parents must feel --if the child is lucky enough to still have parents? 

Make no mistake. You're reading this now for a reason. You cannot be neutral. You may close this page and do nothing, and you know what that means for these people, or you can act now and help. These people need YOUR help. Doing what you can makes a difference. This is your chance --and theirs. 

You'll be able to say that you acted to stop genocide. 

Please ACT NOW.

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