Comment C. Hulsman: This is an excellent article, explaining, not justifying, the reasons for Catholic leaders to support dictators Qaddafi and Assad. I know the Greek Melkite Patriarch Gregorios III personally and know his involvement in Muslim-Christian dialogue. He certainly knows the risks of Islamists coming to power. “Of course, this is an old story. In Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Christians generally preferred the devil they knew to the one they didn't, and events have proven them sadly correct,” Allen writes. This is not true. I was in Iraq in the year 2000 when plans that Pope John Paul II were still in the air. I have met with senior Christian leaders and they knew Saddam was a devil but they also knew popular sentiments among Islamists and were right to fear them. This is what Westerners at that time did not see or did not want to see. I am very cautious about the background paper of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs on the Palestinian Christian population. I have not seen the paper but have seen a considerable amount of manipulation in population figures in different countries in the past and know that the JCPA has political interests to present the figures of Christians in Israel en the Palestinian areas in a way that is in their favor. For now I do not believe their argument that Palestinian Christianity did not decline. I have seen the decline first hand in Bethlehem. I have described settlers taking over Jacob’s Well, a Christian site ( See: Jacob’s Well; the tragic end of a Christian Palestinian shrine, RNSAW, 2000, week 43, art. 22, http://www.arabwestreport.info/year-2000/week-43/22-jacobs-well-tragic-e...). I would like to see their arguments and obtain feedback from Palestinian Christian scholars before accepting their figures.

But apart from these comments, the text of Allen is just very good, giving an honest and fair description of the situation Arab Catholic leaders are in.