Ambassador Ron Prosor said the UN is ignoring the murder of minorities in the Arab world. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – The international community is turning a blind eye to the murder of minorities in the Arab world, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor told a meeting of a 15-nation council on minorities in the region.

“Last year police in Saudi Arabia stormed a Christian prayer meeting and arrested its entire congregation, including women and children. … In 2013, three Iranian Christians were caught selling bibles, found guilty of ‘crimes against state security,’ and sentenced to 10 years in prison,” Prosor said Friday.

The Israeli envoy said that while minorities are persecuted and slaughtered throughout the region, “There is only one place in the Middle East where minorities have the freedom to practice their faith, to change faiths, or to practice no faith at all—and that is Israel.”

“It’s time for the UN Security Council to break its silence on the murder and expulsion of Christians and other minorities in Arab states,” said Prosor, who noted that since Hamas seized Gaza in 2007, half of the Christian community there has fled. Since the Palestinian Authority took control of Bethlehem in 1995, the city’s Christian population has dropped by nearly 70 percent, he added.