Among the many anomalies of the Obama Administration's foreign policy,
none  appears so anachronistic as its refusal to label the persecution and annihilation of Christians in the Middle East as genocide.
Granted that the term has been too often thrown around carelessly, used incorrectly as a synonym for prejudice and persecution of minorities. It does, of course, have a specific meaning. In the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide it was defined as
"acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group,"
including by the means of
"killing members of the group."
The stubborn refusal of the Obama White House and State Department to apply it to current events in the Mideast is, therefore, something of a mystery. Hundreds of thousands of Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities have been driven from their ancestral homes in Iraq and Syria or have been slaughtered during the rise of Daesh [ISIS/ISIL].
Iraq's Christian population ten years ago was about 1.5 million, but now is estimated at only 500,000. In Syria, of the 1.1 million Christians, about 600,000 have fled or died. Christians have been tortured, raped and even crucified. Mosul, Iraq, which was home to 35,000, is now empty of Christians after an ISIS ultimatum that they either convert to Islam or be executed. In Syria, Gregorios III Laham, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of the Church of Antioch, reported "entire villages" have been "cleared of their Christian inhabitants."
American human rights activists - Jews as well as Christians - have called on the Obama Administration to admit Christian refugees to the U.S. under special quotas In an ironic twist, American policy now discriminates against Mideast Christian entry. The State Department accepts refugees from lists prepared by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees which oversees large refugee camps in the Mideast. However, endangered Christians do not dare enter these camps where they have been attacked by fellow Muslim refugees.
Christian groups and human rights and religious freedom advocates have been calling on the Obama administration to label the situation as a "genocide" - arguing that the terminology would help to bring a global community response to the crisis. But Secretary of State John Kerry told Congress last week that he is having an "additional evaluation" to help him determine whether the systematic murder of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East should be declared "genocide." Earlier White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest conceded that the Obama administration's hesitation to label the Islamic State's persecution of Christians and other religious minorities as "genocide" is because of the legal ramifications. Kerry was responding to Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R.-Neb.), sponsor of a
resolution that would declare on behalf of Congress that the slaughter of Christians is, in fact, genocide.
The Administration's hesitation appears to be part of its general effort to find common ground with Muslim regimes in the Middle East, many of whom had long placed restrictions on Christian religious practice or looked the other way when violence occurred.
This is, after all, an Administration, which refuses use the words "Islamic radical" or "Islamic terror" and coming to the defense of the Christians in the region, would clearly not fit into their strategy.
But U.S. Christian groups are demanding that the label genocide is invoked and that the Administration come up with a program to end it. Co-sponsored by an organization called In Defense of Christians and the Knights of Columbus, a petition is being promoted with a new nationwide TV ad. The ad includes quotes by presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio endorsing a genocide declaration, a position supported by 55 percent of Americans, according to a 2015 K of C-Marist poll. The signers "implore" Secretary Kerry "to speak up on behalf of these brutalized minority populations and urge him "to declare that Christians, along with Yazidis and other vulnerable minorities, are targets of ongoing genocide."
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