By Gregg Roman, Op-ed contributor Saturday, January 03, 2026
The ancient monasteries of Mosul are rubble. Bethlehem’s Christian population has collapsed from 86% in 1950 to barely 10% today. Across the Middle East, Christian communities that predate Islam by six centuries are shrinking or living under constant threat. Some have disappeared.
The world does nothing. The United Nations issues statements. The European Union expresses concern. Washington offers sympathy, occasionally backed by force, but rarely by sustained strategy. The architecture of international protection has failed.
One Middle Eastern power possesses the capability, the interest, and the moral authority to help fill this void. That power is Israel.
This is strategy, not charity. Israel should institutionalize it.
The collapse of the Middle Eastern order has altered Israel’s position. Israel is no longer merely a besieged state fighting for survival; it is a decisive regional actor with unmatched intelligence, military reach, and alliance potential. Yet the struggle is far from over. Iran’s network of proxies remains active and rebuilding. Hezbollah endures. Hamas adapts. Turkey advances its Islamist agenda. Political Islam continues to threaten regional minorities.
That reality makes minority protection not a postwar luxury, but a strategic necessity.
A durable regional order — Pax Israeliana — cannot rest on military strength alone. It must also be built on alliances, economic integration, and the defense of vulnerable communities whose survival directly undermines the totalitarian vision of Islamist movements. Minority protection is not a moral add-on; it is a pillar of regional stability.
Christians, Druze, Kurds, and Yazidis of the Middle East are Israel’s natural partners. They face many of the same forces that have targeted the Jewish state for decades: jihadist movements, sectarian militias, and regimes that weaponize religious identity. When Druze villages in southern Syria faced imminent ISIS attack, Israeli intervention, not international peacekeepers, made the difference. When Christian communities sought protection or medical aid during the Syrian civil war, it was often Israel that quietly provided it.
These actions remain ad hoc and reactive. They reflect instinct rather than doctrine. That must change.
Israel should establish a dedicated governmental body with an explicit mandate to protect threatened minorities and preserve Judeo-Christian heritage across the Middle East. Modeled on Nativ, the organization that maintained ties with Soviet Jewry for decades, this agency could be housed in the Prime Minister’s Office and staffed by diplomats, intelligence professionals, humanitarian specialists, and heritage preservation experts. Call it Lishkat HaBrit: the Bureau of the Covenant.
Its mission would be fourfold: sustained diplomatic advocacy for persecuted communities; intelligence coordination to provide early warning of threats; targeted humanitarian assistance to besieged populations; and the preservation of churches, monasteries, and sacred sites representing two millennia of Christian presence in the region.
This initiative aligns with what the Trump administration wants from its allies. Vice President JD Vance stated plainly: “We want the Israelis and the Sunnis to police their own region of the world.” He explained why America cares about this region at all, because most Americans believe their Savior “was born, died, and resurrected in that narrow little strip of territory on the Mediterranean.”
President Trump ordered strikes against ISIS in Nigeria on Christmas Day to protect Christians being slaughtered there. The message could not be clearer: this administration will act to defend persecuted Christians. But American reach has limits. American attention is divided. American troops cannot be everywhere. Israel can be the force multiplier that extends American values without requiring American boots on the ground.
Critics will object. They will label this neo-colonialism, as though protecting minorities from annihilation were equivalent to imposing foreign rule. They will warn of provoking Islamist hostility, as if the forces persecuting Christians and Yazidis were not already committed to Israel’s destruction. They will argue Israel should focus exclusively on Jewish interests, ignoring how minority alliances strengthen Israel’s regional position and reinforce its most important partnerships.
These objections are not serious. They represent the reflexes of a diplomatic establishment that has presided over the steady erosion of Middle Eastern pluralism.
Every Christian community that survives rebukes the ideological monoculture sought by political Islam. Every protected minority becomes a potential partner in intelligence, stability, and legitimacy. Every preserved church or monastery signals that alliance with Israel yields tangible benefits, and that the forces of destruction do not always prevail.
For 70 years, Israel asked the world for protection and received little more than statements. Today, Israel has the capacity to protect others who share its civilizational heritage and face its common enemies.
David Ben-Gurion created Nativ to uphold a covenant with Jews trapped behind the Iron Curtain. That mission succeeded beyond expectation. A new mission now presents itself: extend that covenant outward, strengthen the regional alliance against political Islam, preserve the living pluralism of the Middle East.
The age of isolation is over. The age of responsibility has arrived. Israel should rise to meet it.
Gregg Roman is executive director of the Middle East Forum.
