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SYRIA – “In Sadad, The largest Massacre Of Christians In Syria”


ONE SMALL VOICE CRIES OUT FOR THE PERSECUTED CHURCH

The greatest Christmas gift was never placed beneath a tree, but lay within a manger beneath a star for all to see. ow solidarity with the Syrian army and residents of the Christian town of Sadad during a candlelight sit-in in front of the Syriac Orthodox Cathedral of St. Georges on Saturday.
(SANA/Reuters)

PEOPLE IN DAMASCUS SHOW SOLIDARITY WITH THE SYRIAN ARMY AND RESIDENTS OF THE CHRISTIAN TOWN OF SADAD DURING A CANDLELIGHT SIT-IN IN FRONT OF THE SYRIAC ORTHODOX CATHEDRAL OF ST. GEORGES ON SATURDAY.(SANA/REUTERS)

Sadad (Agenzia Fides) – “What happened in Sadad is the most serious and biggest massacre of Christians in Syria in the past two years and a half”: this was stressed by Archbishop Selwanos Boutros Alnemeh, Syriac Orthodox Metropolitan of Homs and Hama, in illustrating to Fides the tragic death toll in the Christian town of Sadad, invaded by Islamist militias a week ago and then re-conquered by the Syrian army.

“45 innocent civilians were martyred for no reason, and among them several women and children, many thrown into mass graves. Other civilians were threatened and terrorized. 30 were wounded and 10 are still missing. For one week, 1,500 families were held as hostages and human shields. Among them children, the elderly, the young, men and women. Some of them fled on foot travelling 8 km from Sadad to Al-Hafer to find refuge. About 2,500 families fled from Sadad, taking only their clothes, due to the irruption of armed groups and today they are refugees scattered between Damascus, Homs, Fayrouza, Zaydal, Maskane, and Al-Fhayle”.

The archbishop continues showing all his bitterness: “There is no electricity, water and telephone in the city. All the houses of Sadad were robbed and property looted. The churches are damaged and desecrated, deprived of old books and precious furniture. Schools, government buildings, municipal buildings have been destroyed, along with the post office, the hospital and the clinic”.

“What happened in Sadad – he says – is the largest massacre of Christians in Syria and the second in the Middle East, after the one in the Church of Our Lady of Salvation in Iraq, in 2010″.

Archbishop Selwanos Boutros Alnemeh concludes:

“We have shouted aid to the world but no one has listened to us. Where is the Christian conscience? Where is human consciousness? Where are my brothers? I think of all those who are suffering today in mourning and discomfort: We ask everyone to pray for us”.

Sadad is a small town of 15,000 people, mostly Syriac Orthodox Christians, located 160 km north of Damascus. It has 14 churches and a monastery with four priests. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 31/10/2013)

Just received a message from an Orthodox priest reminding parishioners about Christmas services, and to think about those Christians under threat and persecution who cannot have Christmas Liturgy.

He reminded us how fortunate we are to have the freedom and safety to worship for the feast day of Christmas at our churches, and that family gatherings and parties should be secondary to worship.

For the sake of our brothers and sisters being martyred for their religion, let us pray especially hard this Christmas and take nothing for granted.

Thank you Father xxx for reminding us about this!

Kyrie Eleison!

It distresses me that many Christians seem to ignore the 100,000 other people killed in the Syrian civil war, most of whom are innocent Muslim civilians, most of whom were slaughtered by the Assad regime.

It also distresses me that they could be so stupid as to see Assad, the butcher of the Maronites, as a "protector" of Christians. Assad protects no one but Assad.

True but beside the point. The same was said of Saddam Hussein, yet Christians fared far better in his police state than in todays fratricidal and internecine 'free Iraq'!

Really? Chaldeans did, but Assyrians didn't--because Saddam didn't care about protecting Christians as much as he cared about maintaining himself in power. Had it been expedient to massacre the Chaldeans, too, he would have done so in an instant.

And far more Maronites were killed by Syrians and their Hezbollah proxies during the long Lebanese civil war, than other Christians have been killed in the Syrian civil war, so tell me again how Assad is a good friend to Christians.

And it seems ALL you care about is how well Christians fare (or at least the Christians you can see), which is not a very Christian attitude.

And, like all too many people on this forum, you also seem prone to the Totalitarian Temptation.

Too true re: the non-Christian victims, though this is a religious forum so it makes sense that their plight is highlighted, we would be good to remember the suffering of all.

As for the plight of Christians under tyrants, after a prayer for mercy I try to view their situation in terms of my own culpability.

My government helped Saddam brutally persecute his enemies, and enabled terrorists to do their worst to Christians after him. A Christian life is no more valuable than another human life, and I rue all of that blood on our hands.

While our relationship with the Assad regime is more complicated, we can't be said to share as much ethical blame for his atrocities. Our culpability in aiding the tormentors of fellow Christians such as described in the article above is much clearer. Lord have mercy on these martyrs and on us for enabling their torment.

We have much to be thankful for and more to be forgiven.

The so-called Free Syrian Army are terrorists mixed with Al-Nusra and other hard core Al-Qaeda like groups. They are killing Christians and Muslims. They are kidnapping bishops and nuns...destroying monasteries and Churches...beheading priests....and taking sniper practice at pregnant women and children. It is disgusting.

During the Lebanese Civil War, no one killed more Christians than the Maronites themselves did.

Horrid. I do hope the Christians arm and protect themselves, while avoiding active participation in the war. God does not encourage us to die blindly like sheep. Protecting ourselves is biblical, especially if you lay your life down for your friends and family.

Meanwhile, no longer able to use chemical weapons with impunity, Assad has taken to dropping improvised demolition bombs consisting of 55-gallon drums filled with high explosives on civilian neighborhoods. Given their high capacity, and the inability to aim them with any sort of precision, their sole purpose is to sow terror and to kill or maim as many civilians as possible.

Why do you insist on referring to cherry-picked intelligence from the Obama administration? I'd think you'd want to have some higher standards than that, but you've been doing it long enough that perhaps not.

Because, as a military analyst with over thirty years of experience, that's the answer that makes the most sense. The quantity of the munitions, the quality of the Sarin that was used, the rockets and artillery shells used to deliver them, and the fact that the attacks originated in areas held by the Syrian Army and were directed solely against rebel-held areas would seem to point to that conclusion.

The alternative would be to conclude that a bunch of rag-tag rebels, with no known chemical manufacturing capability, and no known inventory of chemical delivery systems, somehow managed to produce large quantities of Sarin, loaded them into homemade rocket and artillery systems, and then shot them into areas they themselves held.

http://news.yahoo.com/seymour-hersh-alleges-obama-administration-lied-syria-gas-204437397.html

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-ma...ian-rebels-have-chemical-weapons/5363039

"Most significant, he [Obama] failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.

...

"But in recent interviews with intelligence and military officers and consultants past and present, I found intense concern, and on occasion anger, over what was repeatedly seen as the deliberate manipulation of intelligence. One high-level intelligence officer, in an email to a colleague, called the administration’s assurances of Assad’s responsibility a ‘ruse’. The attack ‘was not the result of the current regime’, he wrote."

Substitute "Obama" for "StuartK".

The only way this makes any sense is because you are sold down the river of allying with the Saudi/Egypt/Sunni despots and Israel against the Iran/Syria/Shiites.

When our allies' fanatic wings (al Nusra, al Qaeda, etc) attack us, Christian innocents, or their Shia enemies you become stuck - you obviously can't defend them, so you attempt to redirect the conversation back on the Shia wing - Assad in this case. It's so obvious to anybody reading this - a thread about horrific Sunni extremist atrocities against Christians and you try to make it about their enemy Assad.

I get it, and anybody who reads these posts gets it - like when I called you out for staying mum on the atrocities the Sunni (and US/Israel allied) Bahrainian government inflicted on its civilians. But when it's Assad we suddenly drag out the soap box.

Just reminding everyone what the agenda is here.

Seymour Hersh? Belly laugh of the day. Seymour Hersh insists to this day that KAL 007 was on a spy mission for the U.S., and that 9/11 was a set-up job by the CIA.