George Saliba, Archbishop of Mount Lebanon and Secretary of the Holy Synod of the Syrian Orthodox Church, explained the unrest in the Arab world as due to Zionists in an interview on Al-Dunya TV on July 24, 2011.
“The source that finances and incites all these international organizations… especially in the Arab world… are led by a single, evil organization, known as Zionism. It is behind all these movements, all these civil wars, and all these evils… Jesus Christ healed the sick among the Jews… and resurrected their dead. [How did they repay him?] “They strived to crucify him until he died…”
“Do the people of the opposition [today]... belong to Christianity or to Islam? No. They are deeply rooted in Judaism and in Zionism… Any intelligent person who reads The Protocols of the Elders of Zion will see the extent of its influence on the politics of our region and the world.”
Earlier in the year of 2011, Bishop George Saliba also gave his view on the schemes of Zionists in an interview with Al Intiqad online newspaper when he found Zionists responsible for the burning of the Koran on March 20, 2011 by Florida pastor Terry Jones.
Bishop Saliba said, "The burning of the Holy Quran by the US Jones, is considered an assault against religion, morals, and humanity, and is triggers incitement and separation".
He also referred that "Terry Jones" is not a man of religion, not a Pastor, but he is rather a Zionist agent serving the Zionist scheme, and hates all Christians even before he burned the Quran.
"We are with the Muslims, Islam, and the Quran, and we are one united religion. Who did this action, first of which is the US Pastor, are destined to Hell", Bishop George Saliba affirmed.
Bishop Saliba is a bishop of The Syriac Orthodox Church, an autocephalous Oriental Orthodox church based in the Eastern Mediterranean, with members spread throughout the world. The Church derives its origin from one of the first Christian communities, established in Antioch by the Apostle St. Peter. The current head of the Syriac Orthodox Church is the Patriarch Moran Mor Ignatius Zakka I Iwas, who resides in Damascus, the capital of Syria.
There are 680,000 Syriac Orthodox members in Syria and 5,000 in Turkey, 2,000 in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (500 in Jerusalem and 1,500 Bethlehem) (numbers in Iraq is unknown). In Lebanon they number up to 50,000. In addition, there are approximately 80,000 members in the United States, 80,000 in Sweden, 50,000 in Germany, 15,000 in the Netherlands, and thousands of members in Brazil, Switzerland, and Austria.
The church is centered in Syria where it has its headquarters and where they have the majority of their members. There are no real independent groups, however, located in Damascus. The non-democratic Syrian government is dominated by members from the Alawite sect. Control is maintained through numerous security services and Military Intelligence (mukhabarat) is suspected of providing support to different radical groups.
Despite its location in a dictatorial state, the Syriac Orthodox Church is very active in ecumenical dialogues. It has been a member church of World Council of Churches since 1960 and the Patriarch is one of the presidents of World Council of Churches. The Syriac Orthodox Church is also actively involved in ecumenical dialogues with the Catholic Church and Eastern orthodox churches. It has also been involved in the Middle East Council of Churches since 1974.
The remarks by Bishop Saliba are unfortunately not an isolated case among Middle Eastern Christians. The anti-Semitic trend has become especially apparent after the assault in October 31, 2010 on the Syriac Catholic Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad, leaving 58 dead and 67 wounded in the worst attack on the Iraqi Christian community since 2003.
The Melkite Greek Patriarch Gregory III Laham two months after the church assault, characterized the terrorist attacks on Iraq’s Christians as part of “a Zionist conspiracy against Islam.” He further affirmed, “All this behavior has nothing to do with Islam... but it is actually a conspiracy planned by Zionism...and it aims at undermining and giving a bad image of Islam.”
While the patriarch has warned of the dangers of Christian emigration and the formation of a “society uniquely Muslim,” he attributed the risk of “demographic extinction” solely to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Melkite Greek Catholic Church became known for its negative views on Israel when Hilarion Capucci titular archbishop of Caesarea was arrested on August 18, 1974 by Israeli police for smuggling weapons into the West Bank in a Mercedes sedan. He was subsequently convicted by an Israeli court of using his diplomatic status to smuggle arms to the Palestine Liberation Army and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He was released two years later due to intervention by the Vatican.
Iraqi priest Father Suheil Qasha in an interview with NBN TV on November 9, 2010 claimed that the Jews consider all gentiles to be beasts, and asserted that the “real danger” to Middle Eastern Christians came from Zionism. He went on to state that those who perpetrated the attack on the church in Baghdad were certainly not Muslims, but probably those trained and supervised “by global Zionism.”
[Father Qasha was a Christian presence for the ceremony commemorating the 79th anniversary of the founding of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party on Sunday, November 21, 2010.]
Anti-Semitism extends to the Coptic Orthodox Church, which, serving around 10 percent of Egypt’s population, is the largest single church in the Middle East and North Africa. As liberal Egyptian blogger Samuel Tadros points out, a certain Father Marcos Aziz Khalil wrote in the newspaper Nahdet Masr: “The Jews saw that the Church is their No. 1 enemy, and that without [the] priesthood the Church loses its most important component . Thus the Masonic movement was the secret Zionist hand to create revolution against the clergy.”
Bishop George Saliba, despite his views on Jews, is quite active in various ecumenical activities. He is a member of the Conference of Islamic-Christian dialogue and on the executive committee of The Middle East Council of Churches. He was at the second Christian Muslim Dialogue Consultation and is known to have important influence on the Patriarch.
Bishop George Saliba has been controversial within his own community. It has been said that the previous Patriarch Jacob refused to make Saliba who was a monk a bishop despite his desire for the position because the Patriach knew he would not be appropriate for the position.
The claim is made that Saliba and his supporters took revenge on Patriarch Jacob by trying to assassinate him but failed at it. In 1979, Patriarch Jacob died and the present Patriarch Moran Mor Ignatius Zakka I Iwas was elected. It was Patriarch Zekka who consecrated monk Saliba to the bishop of Mount- Lebanon and made him secretary of the synod.
Mr. Saliba has also on various occasions on television expressed his sympathy to GHB- figures as being the workers for the Assyrian nation. The GHB was a militant Assyrian/Syriac party, whose stated aim is to create an independent Assyrian state in Beth Nahrain, a reference to the Assyrian homeland. It has been labeled as a terrorist group by the Turkish government because of its readiness to use force and the threat of force against military targets for the purpose of achieving its political goal.
The Gabo d'Hirutho d'Bethnahrin (GHB) or Mesopotamia Freedom Party in May 2004 became the European Syriac Union in an alliance between Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian political of cultural organizations in Europe. The group had a youth wing as well dubbed "Free Youth of Bethnahrin." Today, it is notable for operating Suroyo TV.
During the inaugural meeting of the GHB- Television “Suroyo TV” in 2004, there was a conversation between Bishop Saliba and Mr. Yusuf Kangus (alias: Yusuf Bet Turo), the presenter of the Suroyo TV.
Mr. Kangus starts the conversation as follows: Bless me, high Father. I wish on behalf of our group convey to you our thanks to your support as from the beginning of our group and our goals which we achieved today with the establishment of the Suroyo TV .
George Saliba I want to say to you (my) friends, (my) beloved ones, you the founders and workers of the Suroyo TV, you are the soldiers, the servants, monks and laity are in the interests of the Syrian cause; may the Lord bless all of you.
Many people talk about the Syrian cause and want to defend and this (only) with words….. but their heart is empty of the things they say. But you who by your ideas, by your deeds, by meditation, your struggle, your defend and you are who have the heart to the Syrian cause…. May the Lord bless all of you.
Suroyo TV is the honor to the Syrian Cause.
And when I say Christian (Suroyo), with that I mean Syrian and when I say Syrian (I mean); this holy people consisting out of Babylonians, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Arameans, Phonicians, Chaldeans, Syrians, that is our people.
And everybody who sins (denies) against these names (identities), sins against Christ (an) sins against God. For this reason the Syrianism (Suryoyutho) is the mother and the daughter of these holy names with which you have made the Suroyo TV as the mother and the voice and the language of these blessed Syrian people all over the world….
The Aram-Naharaim Foundation from which the suspicions about Bishop Saliba are taken is a non-governmental, non-profit and non-political organization with the main goal of defending the fundamental human rights of the Aramean people and to support social and culture projects in the broadest sense of the word. It seeks to focus the attention of the international community on one of the oldest Semitic peoples still in existence; who have been continuously present for thousands of years in the area of Aram-Naharaim and have left an ineradicable cultural stamp on the world heritage.
The Aramean people (not to be confused with ‘Armenians’) speak Aramaic, the language spoken by Abraham, Moses and Jesus. They are the indigenous people of what was called in ancient times Aram- Nahrin, in our days it is called ‘Mesopotamia’. Some Arameans today identify themselves with “Assyrians,” while other Arameans became known as “Chaldeans”. However all of them are Arameans.
Further Reading:
Greek Bishop’s Clarification: Jews are Satanists who want to take over the World
