The relative dearth of coverage might have to do with holiday understaffing at news outlets, or it might not: I'm not one to generally go after news organizations for overemphasizing the troubles of Christians in Israel (who, don't, in fact, have many troubles) and underplaying the near-genocidal campaign of Muslim extremists against Christians in places like Egypt and Iraq, but this attack seems like a watershed moment, and not only for Egypt, which is entering a long and dangerous moment as it changes leadership. One way to think about the Muslim Arab Middle East is as a place historically intolerant of the rights of non-Arab Muslim minorities: The blacks of Sudan, who are trying to break free of Khartoum's hold; the Kurds in Iraq and Syria; Christians in Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq; and the Jews of Israel, among others. In Saudi Arabia, of course, it is illegal even to build a church, and I'm afraid it will soon be illegal to build one in Iraq. And take note, by the way, where Iraqi Christians run to, when they run -- for the protective embrace of another Middle East minority (just as Sudanese Christians have been running to Israel in large numbers):
An Oct. 31 siege on a Baghdad church that killed at least 58 parishioners and staff members sparked a new Christian exodus from the Iraqi capital and the northern city of Mosul. About 1,000 families sought refuge in Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish enclave afterward, according to the United Nations.
