In conversation with Damian Thompson, Benedict Kiely discusses the plight of Christian minorities in countries around the world. Best known may be the violence against Christians committed by Muslims from Iraq to Nigeria. But these are not the only cases: Christians have been victims of deadly attacks in Burma, Sri Lanka, and India, as well as brutal suppression by the Chinese and North Korean governments. Kiely argues that Western indifference is sometimes a product of anti-Christian and anti-religious prejudice. In contrast to this indifference, Kiely and Thompson point to the heroic efforts made by Jews to save their brethren around the world, both through philanthropic organizations and by the Israeli government—and, moreover, the leading role Jews have played in condemning the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and elsewhere. (Audio, 31 minutes. The discussion of Jewish attitudes begins around the 16-minute mark.)

On Wednesday, a double bombing in Jerusalem left two dead, and many others injured—an attack the likes of which has not been seen since 2016. In a Jenin hospital, meanwhile, armed Palestinians removed an Israeli who had been injured in a car accident, reportedly murdering him in the process, and held his body hostage for two days. All this comes as a year that has seen numerous stabbings, shootings, and other terrorist attacks is drawing to a close. Yaakov Lappin comments:

Unlike the individual or small groups of terrorists who, acting on radical ideology and incitement to violence, picked up a gun, a knife, or embarked on a car-ramming attack, this time a better organized terrorist cell detonated two bombs—apparently by remote control—at bus stops in the capital. Police and the Shin Bet have exhausted their immediate physical searches, and the hunt for the perpetrators will now move to the intelligence front.

It is too soon to know who, or which organization, conducted the attack, but it is possible to note that in recent years, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has taken a lead in remote-control-bombing terrorism. Last week, a car bomb that likely contained explosives detonated by remote control was discovered by the Israel Defense Forces in Samaria, after it caught fire prematurely. In August 2019, a PFLP cell detonated a remote-control bomb in Dolev, seventeen miles northwest of Jerusalem, killing a seventeen-year-old Israeli girl and seriously wounding her father and brother. Members of that terror cell were later arrested.

With the Palestinian Authority (PA) losing its grip in parts of Samaria to armed terror gangs, and the image of the PA at an all-time low among Palestinians, in no small part due to corruption, nepotism, and its violation of human rights . . . the current situation does not look promising.