Syrian Refugees

Ed Miliband and the Labour Party deserve immense credit for having prevented a British military intervention in support of the Israeli-backed Islamist insurrection in, and invasion of, Syria.

He and it ought therefore to call for the United Kingdom to become a refuge, even if only a temporary one, for all those who are the victims of that insurrection and invasion: Alawites, Shi'ites, Druze, and many types of Christian.

Each of those communities is a distinct ethnic group, so that its members are instantly identifiable by anyone from the region or who has specialist knowledge of it. Was it wrong to give refuge to Jews, as such, in the 1930s?

It is quite amusing that many of those cheering on Nigel Farage probably assume that the Christians in Syria are white, while most of them probably assume that those Christians are the products of recent missionary activity from Europe or the United States.

But in fact they are the ancient indigenous people of the territory that is now divided among the many states in the Levant and Mesopotamia, and they converted to Christianity when, or well before, that became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

When the Muslims conquered Jerusalem, it had had an entirely Christian population for several centuries. Those inhabitants' pre-Christian ancestors had been conquered by the Israelites in that city which they themselves had founded. But as a people, they were still there. And they are still there now.

They invented Arab nationalism as Catholics, Orthodox, Oriental Christians, or occasionally Protestants (but of Orthodox ancestry), studying at American Protestant missionary universities that were free of association with British or French imperialism.

That included the invention of the modern concept of Filastin. It, and Arab nationalism generally, are expressions both of indigeneity and of Christianity.

The party and Leader who valiantly prevented British intervention to collaborate in the genocide of those whose identity that is ought now to call on Britain to do her continuing duty to them, not least in view of Britain's and Labour's guilt in bringing about their continuing genocide in Iraq.

That party and that Leader ought also to stand squarely with those people's principal protector, Russia, which is the ongoing victim of Islamist terrorism backed by exactly the same powers that are also supporting it in Syria.