A destroyed Christian church in the Middle East.

B’nai B’rith International, the world’s oldest Jewish service organization, is teaming up with experts to promote knowledge about the roughly 200 million Christians who are being persecuted in the Middle East.

The Jerusalem-based B’nai B’rith World Center is undertaking this initiative. Around 200 million Christians are persecuted in this region every year.

“This is an issue that’s a major human rights issue in the world, that it’s not getting the attention it deserves in the West,” said Alan Schneider of B’nai B’rith World Center, according to CBN News.

Schneider and his group recently hosted Assyrian Christian Juliana Taimoorazy from the Iraqi Christian Relief Council and Egyptian Coptic Christian Author Raymond Ibrahim in for discussion about persecution of Christians. “Since 2003, there has been a systematic attack launched against the Christian community and other minorities in Iraq,” Taimoorazy said.

By the end of Saddam Hussein’s reign, Taimoorazy said Islamic extremists “were to go in and attack families—kill children, kidnap women, impregnating them, torturing men, beheading them.”

“Then they started attacking clergy members,” she said.

“If this idea gets out that Islam is intolerant to the other, then it kind of puts the struggle with Israel in a different light,” Ibrahim said.