Many Greeks worldwide do not realize why the current conflict in the Middle East affects Greece in a very profound way.

With the entire world caught up in an Israel vs. Palestine dialectic, it is continually lost on the average Greek that there is a very strong Greek Orthodox Christian community located in the Levant, which numbers approximately 1.5 million: 1.1 million in Syria, 100,000 in Israel, and 300,000 in Jordan to be exact.

It must be stressed that these Orthodox Christians are not Arabs. Although, many speak Arabic and have absorbed some Arabic traditions and customs, thanks to the “Arabization” that has taken place throughout history and over the centuries.

Let us turn to world history to define our terms. The modern Arab comes from the Arabian Peninsula, and before a series of conquests occurring between the 700s AD and the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, there was a strong Greek population living in the Levant.

This points to a complicated issue, during which the Ottomans came in and Arabized the local Greek population. In short, Greeks were forced to speak Arabic and stratified under the Ottoman system as a group of second-class citizens, since they were Eastern Orthodox Christians who had once emigrated from Greece.

Of course, several waves of Hellenic colonization are responsible for why a Greek community reached the Levant, including Greek populations spurring from Ancient Greek trading ports in the Middle East, to the conquests of Alexander the Great, the subsequent founding of the city of Alexandria, and the Greek kingdoms ruling over these areas long after Alexander the Great’s passing.

Arab Orthodox Christians have instituted Greek schools in many of their churches, just like Greek Americans and Australians have done.

Even throughout the Byzantine Empire, which lasted well into the 1000s and officially ended in 1453, multiple waves of Greek emigration extended to the modern-day Middle East and even through the Ottoman era. This establishes how and why history supports the healthy movement of ethnic Greeks to regions far outside the current nation’s physical borders.

Consequently, pockets of Hellenic communities remain, dotting the entire Middle East. Despite centuries-long assimilation efforts by the Ottoman and Arabs thereafter, Greek Orthodox Christians in the Levant were able to retain their religion.

Another interesting point to explore is that because of this retention of faith, religion became a primary identifying factor in the Middle East. Greek Orthodox faithful essentially became Arab Orthodox, because they learned to speak chiefly Arabic. Unfortunately, over the years, mass expulsion of Orthodox communities became common across the Middle East, especially after the introduction of Israel as a Jewish nation.

Similarly, many Greeks today also do not know that Bethlehem – located, of course, in modern-day Israel – used to be 86% Orthodox Christian before the creation of the Jewish state. Then, in the 1940s and beyond, this figure dwindled to 14% after the advent of Zionism.

This is because Israelis are replacing them, largely due to the fact that many ancient churches and holy sites owned by the Orthodox Church have been illegally possessed or seized by illegal Israeli settlers. One such famous incident occurred when the Archbishop of Jerusalem was placed under house arrest by the Jewish government for two whole years.

What this means is that to this day, there is a two-pronged attack being levied against Orthodox Christians in the Middle East, which the world’s media and even the Greek government are ignoring. As radical Islamic terrorists, political instability, and Zionist entities vie for Gaza, Christianity’s two neighboring Abrahamic religions are currently persecuting and dominating Orthodox Christians.

A Greek Orthodox Arab prays in Cairo, Egypt.

For instance, Zionists are forcefully confiscating property owned by the Greek Orthodox Church and selling it to Israeli settlers. Secondly, they treat Palestinian Christians very poorly, since they are considered to be on the same level as Palestinian Muslims. This means they are denied political rights in many cases, and Greek Orthodox churches are bombed and destroyed just as often as mosques are – as was the case with the Saint Porphyrios Church in Gaza, one of the oldest Orthodox Christian churches in the world. It has been hit by Israeli missiles twice in 2024.

Meanwhile, Christians living in the Levant are generally a non-violent group, yet they are being universally ganged up on by both forces ravaging the Israeli-Palestinian state. One-third of Palestine used to be Christian, and now that number stands at around 3%.

But where does Greece fit into all of this? Well, as stated above, this Palestinian Orthodox community has Greek descent – they are Greek Orthodox Christians. They don’t fit within either the Muslim or Jewish groups in the region and as a direct result of this, no one is defending them politically.

Greece should be that defender. It has a military, a historic connection to this Orthodox population, and a Constitution which enshrines Orthodoxy into its government and national identity. Instead of cozying up to the United States and Israel for economic reasons, Greece could easily use the diplomatic credit it has built up to represent a vital Orthodox contingent on the world stage, at a time when they need it most.

Instead of doing this, Greece’s lack of representation and siding with Israel is bearing out on an institutional level, with the Greek government recently tweeting the following:

Amid all of this, a common counterargument applied to the advocating for the worldwide Orthodox community’s rights includes expressed fears over Israeli and Turkish retaliation against Greece. However, due to Greece’s involvement in NATO, it receives military protection from all other NATO member countries. Even Turkey, which routinely commits war crimes and defies US interests by selling weapons to enemy nations, remains a part of NATO because there is no legal recourse for their removal. So, why shouldn’t Greece step out of its way to protect an Orthodox community in peril, with Greek descent?

It would be a mistake in government policy for Greece to continually fail to reap the benefits of being in NATO while simultaneously standing idly by and watching Arab Orthodox Christians suffer daily.

Granting political rights to Christians in the Middle East is KTE’s solution to the atrocities they have incurred. As it stands currently, the governments of Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and others have very few institutional protections for Christians living there.

Moreover, due to Greece’s constitutional framework which enshrines the Greek Orthodox faith, there is already a legal precedent to grant these Arab Orthodox communities political rights, much like the Russian Empire did during Ottoman times.

If Greece were to adopt this diplomatic and political role, it wouldn’t necessarily be siding against Israel all the time. However, in the event that Israel was to inflict more atrocities upon the Orthodox community residing there, then the burden of responsibility would fall squarely on them, not Greece.

As the situation in the Middle East becomes more unstable, Greece cannot continue to be silent and side with the aggressor, who has clearly violated the rights of the Greek population many times.

Remember, these are people with Greek heritage. While they may not have 100% Greek culture due to being Arabized, they do have Greek ancestry. They still worship in the same churches as us. We share a common history with Arab Orthodox Christians, and many of them still retain their native Greek language.

There is nothing that the United States and Israel can offer Greece that is worth more than the protection of our own people.