Chris Cuomo’s Terrible Gaffe on Christians in Jerusalem

Note: An update was appended to this post at approximately 5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 8, 2014

First the good news.

And then the bad news.

The good news is that CNN is finally waking up to the extirpation of Christians by radical Islamists in Iraq. And moreover, Chris Cuomo, (shown above), is doing what he can to draw attention to this story.

The bad news is that CNN morning anchor Cuomo does not know what he’s talking about when it comes to Christians in Jerusalem.

The Media Research Center captured the evidence of Cuomo’s ignorance in a post it published yesterday.

In a segment that aired on Thursday, August 7, 2014, CNN’s morning show New Day did a brief segment on the ethnic cleansing of Christians from Qaraqosh, the largest Christian city in Iraq. CNN correspondent Nic Robertson described how tens of thousands of Christians “are now fleeing for their lives” into Kurdish-controlled areas, looking for sanctuary.

It was a brief segment, but had great value because it communicated to the viewers about a humanitarian catastrophe that is taking place.

But then Chris Cuomo undermined its value with the following statement:

Of course the question becomes is who is going to defend the Christians. A large under reported story. The same thing is going on in Jerusalem.

No, Chris, the same thing is not “going on in Jerusalem.” Christians are not being forced to flee Jerusalem by the tens of thousands. Christians are not having their heads cut off in the Holy City as they are in Iraq.

In fact, Israel, Jerusalem included, is one of the few places in the Middle East where the indigenous population is growing. In 1949 there were approximately 34,000 Christians living in Israel, the vast majority of them Arabs. Today there are more than 130,000 Arab Christians living in Israel. That’s a huge increase and it took place under Israeli control.

The population of Christians in Jerusalem has remained steady since the early 1960s. In 1961, the Jordanian Census reported that in 1961, there were 10,795 Christians living in Jerusalem. In 1967, an Israeli census reported 10,813 Christians living in the city and in 2007 and in 2011, the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies reported that there were approximately 14,000 Christians living in the city.

The numbers are not exactly comparable because the city’s boundaries have changed over the years, but this doesn’t detract from the main point: That Christians in Jerusalem are not being driven from their homes by murderers as they are in Iraq.

Hopefully, Chris Cuomo will learn more as events proceed.

Update: There is hope. Cuomo’s timeline on Twitter indicates that he is cognizant of the problems with radical Islam and its hostility toward Israel and is interested in promoting the plight of Christians suffering Islamist violence. See these tweets from August 7, 2014: