The day before Christmas Eve, President Obama released a statement bemoaning the plight of Christians in the Middle East. Here's the statement, in part:

In some areas of the Middle East where church bells have rung for centuries on Christmas Day, this year they will be silent; this silence bears tragic witness to the brutal atrocities committed against these communities by ISIL. We join with people around the world in praying for God's protection for persecuted Christians and those of other faiths, as well as for those brave men and women engaged in our military, diplomatic, and humanitarian efforts to alleviate their suffering and restore stability, security, and hope to their nations.

Well, isn't that nice. President Obama's administration has unleashed the greatest wave of anti-Christian violence in recent history thanks to his Arab Spring, which has raised Islamism to newfound heights across the Middle East. Christians from Nigeria to Syria to Egypt to the Gaza Strip have fallen under fire. But he's praying. It's rather ironic to hear about prayer from the same president who said that it wasn't enough to pray about gun violence. In October, Obama said after the Umpqua Community College mass shooting, "our thoughts and prayers are not enough...Each time this happens, I am going to say that we can actually do something about it, but we're going to have to change our laws." Obama's idolatrous worship of government, which he believes can cure all ills so long as it is given enough power, comes to a sudden halt, however, when it comes to problems he could actually alleviate using his power as commander-in-chief. Obama's State Department admitted 132 Syrian refugees to the United States between the November 13 Paris terrorist attacks and November 30 -- and all 132 were Sunni Muslims. Over the past five years, the American government has admitted just 53 Syrian Christian refugees. Pope Francis has called the treatment of Syrian Christians "genocide." As Nina Shea of National Review reports:

Syria's Christian population, which before the war numbered 2 million, has since 2011 been decimated...Tens of thousands of Aleppo's 160,000 Christians alone have fled, many to Lebanon, after 1,000 of their community, including two Orthodox bishops, were abducted and murdered, according to Melkite Catholic archbishop Jean-Clement Jeanbart. In Khabour valley, an Assyrian bishop is frantically trying to raise ransom for 200 hostages whom ISIS threatens to kill, while many others of his diocese have fled to Turkey. Thousands of Yazidis, who numbered 80,000, have left after many of their girls and women were enslaved by ISIS in Raqqa. In Homs, Hassake, and elsewhere, the non-Muslim minorities face, in addition to Assad's barrel bombs and war's deprivations, targeted execution, rape, kidnapping, and forced conversion to Islam, prompting their exodus.

Yet Obama's State Department has refused to label Christian persecution a "genocide" for purposes of admitting refugees. But don't worry, Obama's praying for Middle Eastern Christians, even as he does nothing but make the job of their Muslim persecutors simpler.