Historian: Israel safest place in Mideast for Christians

Ryan Jones 13/3/2012 The steep drop in the number of Christians living in the Palestinian Authority-controlled territories is often blamed on Israel. But Middle East historian and Israel’s current ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, says that a similar erosion of Christian populations in other countries in the region suggests the Palestinian narrative is simply not true, and that Israel is in fact the safest place in the Middle East for Christians today. “As 800,000 Jews were once expelled from Arab countries, so are Christians being forced from lands they’ve inhabited for centuries,” Oren wrote in the Wall Street Journal