Not just Alawites: Syrian Christians ‘hid under furniture’ to escape slaughter in the city of Homs

Over the past week, the largest part of the world’s already scant media attention on the slaughter in Syria has focused on the Alawite community, leaving the plight of the nation's Christians nearly ignored.

Amid the ongoing carnage, an Israeli Christian with connections to the Christian community in the city of Homs recently spoke to ALL ISRAEL NEWS to provide insight into the complex situation faced by Syria’s Christians under the new Islamist regime.

Manuel Abu Ali is the founder of Middle East Christian Aid (MECA), a non-profit organization with a mission to support the forgotten Christian communities in the Middle East.

Abu Ali, an Evangelical Christian from Jerusalem, compared the current situation of Syria's Christians to the ordeal faced by Israeli residents of the Gaza Envelope experienced on Oct. 7, 2023.

“This is a reality they face every single day. Except, there are no heroic soldiers coming to defend them. They’re on their own,” Abu Ali said.

A team from MECA was in the process of bringing aid to local Christians in Homs, just east of the coastal provinces Latakia and Tartous, when the fighting between militants loyal to the ousted Assad regime and troops of the new Islamist government descended into wanton persecution and murder of civilians.

“The team found themselves hiding beneath furniture to avoid being shot or kidnapped by militias roaming the streets outside. They found themselves caught up in the deadliest period of violence in years – with over 1,000 civilians killed,” Abu Ali explained.

The clashes in Homs, similar to the main fighting on the coast, pitted Alawite militias loyal to Assad against the Islamist forces of the new regime – but civilians were targeted by both sides, according to Abu Ali.

“A surge in violence and kidnappings erupted, and homes and shops were attacked in Homs and surrounding villages. Killing everyone in their way, including Christians. Our partners are saying Alawite militias loyal to Assad started this violence,” he told ALL ISRAEL NEWS.

Additional reports from the Syrian coast suggest that Christians were also among the more than 1,000 civilians who were murdered there.

While the new government has stated that it wants to impose order and security, Abu Ali said the forces “basically have al-Qaeda and ISIS-background, so their true colors came out, with some taking advantage of the situation to clean the area of anyone that's not Sunni.”

However, this story went almost unnoticed in the media coverage of the fighting and the massacres, which concentrated on the cities along the coast, which are predominantly Alawite – the ethnoreligious group to which the Assad family also belongs.

Abu Ali emphasized that the MECA team “saw no journalists or any NGOs in the area.”

According to a recent report in New Lines Magazine, Homs has been shaken by a spree of kidnappings and murders targeting minorities, particularly Alawites, since the new regime took over.

While the city’s new police chief denied the sharp rise of this phenomenon, the Syriac Catholic archbishop confirmed that the Christian community is afraid that the horrific situation under the brutal Assad regime might be repeated.

“We tried to talk with the officials, who have the social and political responsibility, but we’ve received no concrete reaction,” archbishop Jacques Mourad told New Lines.

“There is a repeat to all the things the Assad regime did before, we cannot accept this,” Mourad added.

The fate of Syria’s Christians took a sharp turn at the beginning of December 2024.

After years of stalemate, the Islamist rebel group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) broke out of its enclave around the northern city of Idlib, bringing down the decade-long rule of Bashar al-Assad to an end with a lightning assault.

Since then, the new government headed by Ahmed al-Shara, HTS leader and former member of ISIS and al-Qaeda, has struggled to restore public safety and order. Al-Shara is attempting to integrate the myriad of armed rebel gangs – including Islamist, partly foreign terror groups – into a new Syrian army.

Ethnic minorities in Syria are often viewed by the former rebels as having supported the Assad regime and its atrocities against the country’s Sunni majority.

Many have expressed fear of the new order. However, some Christian churches have declared public support for the new government, hoping it will fulfill its promises.

The example of the Idlib enclave, where HTS ruled over Christian and Druze populations, offers faint hope. While minorities faced harassment and some were murdered, they were not expelled and slaughtered wholesale, as was seen under ISIS.

In recent years, when al-Shara (also known as al-Jolani) tried to improve his image in the West, HTS began reaching out to these communities, if only for public relations purposes.

“The new government itself is not against Christians publicly, but it seems like things went out of their control,” Abu Ali said, adding that it has “done virtually nothing to help or protect Syria’s Christians.”

The team in Homs met “a Christian community filled with fear and a feeling of abandonment,” he emphasized.

Over the last several months, across Syria, “Churches have been attacked and Christmas trees burned, graveyards have been desecrated, and gangs are trying to impose sharia law on Christians, forcing women to veil on the streets,” Abu Ali continued.

Christians have been “scared to leave their homes due to fear of attacks on the street or being kidnapped or killed. Those with daughters are especially scared, as they are a prime target for kidnappings and several reported being forced to veil in public,” he said.

Abu Ali also told ALL ISRAEL NEWS that, apart from the government’s Islamist troops and other former terror groups that haven’t yet been integrated, Christians in Homs are also being harassed by Alawite gangs.

About half of those who received aid from MECA were widows who shared heart-wrenching stories.

One of them, said Abu Ali, "tragically had lost her husband just a month before. He had a heart condition, and he was brutally attacked on the street by a group of men. This caused his heart to stop, leaving him dead on the street and [her] to raise their two sons alone.”

“Another widow came with a heart-breaking story. Her husband was kidnapped by Alawites who demanded $8000 in ransom. She appealed to other Christians in the community and part of this sum was raised. The Alawite group agreed to take this amount. They took the money and slaughtered her husband anyway.”

These kinds of kidnappings have occurred sporadically since 2011, when the Civil War broke out. “Recently, after the takeover, these militias have been kidnapping Christians for ransom as a way to fund themselves and control the area,” Abu Ali explained.

He said the persecution of Christians, which occurs across the Middle East, stems from their lack of armed protection and their small numbers, which deny them “safety in numbers.” This also contributes to the broader issue that their situation is not well known in the “Christian West.”

“Many Christians stay silent in the face of persecution out of fear,” Abu Ali acknowledged. “They feel that they have no defense and speaking out will only worsen their situation.”

Even worse, he said, in the region’s tribal societies, “It’s the ‘Muslim East vs Crusader West’. Christians are looked upon as ‘Westerners.’ Eastern Christians are, therefore, close enough to pay the price for hostility towards Western policy, Western civilization and Christianity itself.”

He concluded that if “Christianity is to survive in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries, Christians in the West must acknowledge and educate themselves on the very existence of Christian communities.”

“The events this week only drive home the message that it is time to take action to support Middle Eastern Christians on the frontlines before it’s too late. All they want is to live in safety, with dignity.”