Our Lord Jesus Christ was born in the Middle East—in Bethlehem, Palestine— more or less 2012 years ago, some say exactly 2016 years ago because calendar changes make the real date of the miracle of His birth not the year 2000 but 2000 minus four years.

The first Christians were, of course, his own people, the Jews. God chose to identify with them among all of the other peoples—God chose to be born as a Jewish baby when He decided to give man a chance to be redeemed from his betrayals—because the Jews were the only ones who did not forget the real history of the human race and their debt of their very existence to God.

So, the true God and true Man Jesus was a Palestinian Jew and so were his relatives and friends and his first disciples. But Arabs, Persians (the people we now call Iranians), Egyptians, Libyans, Ethiopians, etcetera were among the first Christians.

Today’s Israel, Palestine, and of course Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq and Syria were places Jesus and his friends knew well.

Unfortunately, these are the places where Christians are at the highest risk of being dispossessed and killed.

If you don’t believe the reports the US State Department releases every year on the human rights abuses and the state of religious tolerance in the Middle East, take it from Terry Waite.

Terry Waite, CBE, the English humanitarian and author of articles and books, served then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, in the 1980s as a special envoy for the Church of England. He went to Iran and Libya and successfully negotiated for the release of people (including an Anglican priest and a journalist) who had been abducted and held as hostages by Muslim terrorists. Then in the course of doing his good works in Lebanon, where he had also successfully parlayed with jihadist abductors to free their hostages, he ended up being held captive by terrorists under the most trying circumstances for nearly five years—from January 20, 1987 to November 18, 1991.

Now, Terry Waite is the head and active worker in several humanitarian foundations, including the British branch of Habitat for Humanity, Emmaus UK and AbleChildAfrica.

Recently, on December 11, he wrote an article for the UK Guardian, titled “The plight of Middle East Christians took me back to Lebanon.” The article has the drop head “I returned to the place I was held hostage to help the hundreds of thousands of Christians fleeing Syria, Iraq and Egypt.”

He went to see for himself “the many Christian refugees who are flooding across the Syrian/Lebanese border” and he traveled “to the Bekaa Valley to visit the refugees who have been forced into exile from Syria.”

He laments how tragic the Syrian situation has become for Christians. That country, he wrote, “has a unique and rich history of religious diversity and tolerance, and in the past Christians and Muslims have shared the same place of worship. Since the beginning of Islam, they have lived in relative harmony – but the war is pushing Christians out, and many believe there will be no way back.”

He observed that “there are now elements of the Arab spring that have been hijacked by Islamic extremists who want to impose sharia law and banish Syrian Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the population.”

He heard the harrowing stories of Christian refugee families.

Christians made up one-fifth of the Middle East population in the early 20th century. Now Christians who have not yet been forced to leave or have not been killed make up only one-twentieth of the population.

Waite said in his Guardian article: “Before the Arab spring Christians in Syria were businesspeople, engineers, lawyers and pharmacists. While Assad brutally restricted political freedoms, the regime did allow the Syrian people religious freedom – more so than elsewhere in the Middle East.” [I don’t quite agree: the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is more tolerant of Christians than Syria.]

“The occupied territories of Palestine are also rapidly losing their Christian communities. Egypt is in turmoil with a series of anti-Coptic Christian riots; Libya is a disaster. In Iraq 300,000 Christians have fled persecution since the downfall of Saddam Hussein. An estimated 100,000 Christians have left Syria, many to border towns like al-Qaa. Lebanon is the last country in the Middle East where Christians can live in relative peace and security.”

That should only be just, about Lebanon. For thee was a time when Lebanon was delightfully “the Hong Kong of the Middle East” ruled by Muslims and Christians working together.

In his visit to Lebanon, Waite heard a refugee say, “The Arab spring is a joke,” said one of the refugees. “It has become another form of persecution.”

He met the Melkite Archbishop of Lebanon and other people and received an invitation to visit again from the Hezbollah, the group that kidnapped him in 1987 that now forms the ruling party in Lebanon.

He ends his article with this paragraph:

“From a Christian perspective, Lebanon is rapidly becoming the only remaining country in the whole of the Middle East where there is a significant Christian presence. It will take plenty of acts of reconciliation before Christians once again feel safe in their homeland.”

But it’s not only from Islamists that Christians in the Middle East are treated scornfully.

The Israeli military and police treat Arab Christians in Israel and the Palestine territories — in Gaza and the West Bank— with the same strictness as they do Muslims.

Last year and the year before, Christian clergy and lay leaders in Jerusalem and Bethlehem complained of the cruel treatment pilgrims were getting.

No matter, how oppressive the atmosphere, however, the Christians, Roman Catholic and Orthodox, alike have to go on with their celebrations of Christmas this week and the Queenship of Mary next week.

In Egypt, despite the earlier declaration of President Morsi that he did not like referring to the Christians in his country as a minority because, he said, the Christians were partners of the Muslims, the new draft constitution is about to curtail the usual freedoms Christians to follow the tenets and doctrines of the faith. That is why Christians are among the groups boycotting the referendum to ratify the new Egyptian constitution.

The other stories in this report detail some aspects of how Christians are suffering in the Middle East.