WHEN the long, grim history of Christianity’s disappearance from the Middle East is written, Ted Cruz’s performance last week at a conference organized to highlight the persecution of his co-religionists will merit at most a footnote. But sometimes a footnote can help illuminate a tragedy’s unhappy whole. For decades, the Middle East’s increasingly beleaguered […]

  The Middle East as it exists now has no future. Its borders were drawn by European colonial powers for their own purposes. The political agendas behind those borders are long dead. The kings and coalitions they were meant to protect have vanished. ISIS is determined to tear apart the borders of the region and […]

  French President Francois Hollande highlighted on Monday the need to preserve Lebanon’s unity and sovereignty, while emphasizing the role of the army in protecting the country. He stressed the importance of supporting the Lebanese army and properly equipping it. He made his remarks at an international meeting held in Paris aimed at supporting Iraq […]

  BEIRUT: The electricity shutdown that Lebanon has been experiencing since 9:30 a.m. Monday would be fixed in a matter of hours, Electricite du Liban said in a statement, with power already having been restored to some areas. “The network received a shock on the Boushrieh- Jamhour 66 Kv line, which resulted in the disconnection […]

  BRITAL, Lebanon (AP) — Syrian refugee Ibrahim Abbas Ali and his family awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of gunfire outside their tent in Lebanon, and for a second time they raced off into the fields, fleeing a war that now seems to have followed them across the border. The […]

  A man who staged a sick prank by filming himself threatening to behead three Syrian refugee children has confessed that he was amused by their weeping and their mother actually loved the video, a police statement said on Saturday. Meanwhile, a security official told Agence France-Presse that the video proved to be a "sick […]

  BEIRUT: Lebanon has decided to set up two camps for Syrian refugees for the first time along its border with war-torn Syria, Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas told AFP on Thursday. The move comes despite long-standing reservations among many in Lebanon over establishing such camps, for fear they will encourage Syrians to stay in […]

 Ted Cruz is trying to score political points while Christians are being persecuted by the terrorist ISIS in the Middle-East. It is just a shame to witness a senator that does not have any understanding of minorities in the Middle-East and the danger they are facing from all fronts trying to lecture them on what should they do while Ted Cruz have been absent of any kind of support in the past years during genocide against Christians. Unfortunately this displays that Ted Cruz is a "freshman" senator who wants the spotlight for his presidential aspirations has a lot of understanding and catching up to do before lecturing people.

By David Benkof is a freelance writer living in St. Louis, and a frequent contributor to both the Daily Calle

For 48 hours now, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has been celebrated as a gutsy hero for walking out of a Christian gathering after some attendees booed his pro-Israel remarks. His comment, “If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you,” drew widespread attention and admiration.

But the episode was more complex, and only underscores how Cruz’s approach to key issues is cynically calculated – or, at best, tone-deaf. He represents an existential threat to the future of the Republican Party.

Members of the GOP who’ve been celebrating his rise because he stands up for conservative principles (or, let’s not kid ourselves, because he’s Hispanic) need to be very careful what they wish for. Should Cruz be nominated for president in 2016, he could devastate the party brand for decades.

The event where Cruz received his jeers was a gathering of mostly Middle Eastern Christians trying to build unity on a crucial issue – the persecution and murder of their co-religionists in the Levant. But the Senator’s remarks overwhelmingly focused on his devotion to the State of Israel. Extravagantly, he declared that ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas are all equivalent manifestations of the “cancer” of religious bigotry. “Murder is murder,” he said.

  As fear of militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria rises in the United States after the beheading of two American journalists, and President Obama lines up support for the use of force against ISIS, the backlash against the movement has already begun in the Arab world. Evidence of that can be seen […]

    The United States announced an additional $103.8 million in humanitarian aid for Lebanon to help the country cope with the impact of the Syrian crisis, while France has contributed 7 million euros to the International Support Group for Lebanon Fund. On a visit to the Turkish capital Ankara, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry […]