Coverage of the events in the international press
GLOBAL MEDIA COVERAGE: The attacks are headline news around the world this morning, with CCTV videos and photos following the attack being heavily featured in the foreign press. Foreign media coverage has included heavy emphasis on the security concerns of Copts as well as anti-Christian bigotry.
The issue of whether Egypt can protect its Christian minority was the most commontheme running through top-tier publications. The Wall Street Journal is running an editorial headlined “Why can’t Egypt’s government protect its Christian minority?” The New York Times’ Magdy Samaan and Declan Walsh pointed to what they suggested was the president’s failure to protect Christians despite the Church coming out to support of him politically. They were also critical of the intelligence agencies’ inability to anticipate attacks despite heightened security and measures to protect churches already in place. ABC News interviewed a number of Christians following the attack, with the common thread being how they no longer feel safe to worship, while the Washington Post has been running a timeline of sectarian terrorist attacks in Egypt since last year.
CNN gave pundit Timothy Kaldas a platform to hammer anti-Christian prejudice, and the theme of anti-Coptic prejudice ran through USA Today’s coverage as well. It quotes Joseph Ghabour, a deacon at St. Mark, the first Coptic church to open in the U.S, as saying that this was part of the Coptic people’s long history of suffering. Taking a slightly more conspiratorial approach was the British conservative publication, the Spectator, which is using the events to justify its fringe idea that there is a global move towards persecuting Christians and that Christians are the most oppressed religious group in the world.
Christian publication Crux is taking a more constructive approach, running a piece by John L. Allen Jr which called on Pope Francis to applaud President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s “commitment to diversity and minority rights but also [be] clear on the importance of political freedom and the rule of law.”
The view from Israel: Don’t fall into the Islamists’ trap. Eran Lerman, the former deputy chief of Israel’s National Security Council, said regional leaders need to support the Sisi administration and not fall for the trap set by the terrorists of sowing discontent between Christians, Muslims and the state. “The stability of the Egyptian government is a strategic value of great importance for the State of Israel. Therefore, Israel and its partners in the Middle East must push themselves to help Egypt in its important struggle against Islamist terror, and enlist US and international support in order to prevent governmental stability in the Country from being undermined,” he writes for Arutz Sheva.
A number of outlets, including the UK’s Express, are running the story of police officerEmad El Rakaybi,who died stopping a suicide attacker from entering the church in Alexandria.