RELIGIOUS CLEANSING IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The LA Times reports on what it calls "religious cleansing in the Middle East" in its editorial - A Christian exodus.

"The religious cleansing of Christians in Iraq is part of a larger pattern in which a faith with origins in the Middle East is being driven out of its native region. From Iraq to Lebanon, which once claimed a Christian majority, to Bethlehem, the West Bank town revered as the birthplace of Jesus, intra-Muslim violence and the Arab-Israeli struggle have combined to persuade (and in some cases force) Christians to relocate to Europe or North America."

The intolerance of Muslim regimes should not come as a surprise. Hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab and Muslim lands were "cleansed" from their host countries in the wake of Israel's independance in 1948 and prominent Palestinian political groups continue to call for the cleansing of Jews from the Middle East landscape, often with the open support of the so-called intelligensia in the West, some of who even call themselves "Jews" and attend Israel-bashing meetings on Judaism's holiest night.