The pope’s dictum about Islam and the inevitable follow up — demonstrations, church burnings, assassinations, and the expected apology — are part of a wider scene: the precarious position of Christian communities in the Middle East as a result of a radicalized Islam.

Arab Christian communities identify with Arab nationalism — indeed, Christian Arabs were the founding fathers of this movement. They share with their Muslim brethren a common language, ethnic origin, and a total rejection of Israel. But the new mood of politicized Islam has made life harder for the members of these ancient communities. The result has been a massive emigration of Christians from the Middle East to the West and a dwindling of their numbers in the region.

Ivan Rioufol, in a column in the French daily Le Figaro of May 26, 2006, breaks with the traditional French approach of blaming every ill on the Israeli-Arab conflict, highlighting the plight of Christian communities in the Muslim world. Mr. Rioufol estimates that the Christian population of Iran has been decimated and that similar “cleansing” has been “observed in Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Egypt.”He notes other instances of anti-Christian persecution: 156 churches and convents destroyed in Bosnia and Kosovo since 1999, 16 dead in anti-Christian riots in the Muslim part of Nigeria, and anti-conversion laws — used as an anti-Christian tool — enacted in March 2006 in Algeria. Worse still, in his view, is the indifference shown by the international community and by organized Christianity toward the suffering of these minority communities. He also remarks on the total absence of reciprocity between Islam and the West: “Saudi Arabia, which finances the construction of mosques throughout the world, does not permit the construction of a chapel.”

As cited in an article by John Vinocur, “Vatican shifts the prism on Mideast Christians,”in the International Herald Tribune of June 6, 2006, La Croix, the French Catholic daily, also has broken with the traditional French approach. La Croix has reported, for instance, on Nablus Christians saying, “We are foreigners … and we are not sure the new Hamas leadership as a vector of Islamic radicalism will continue to need a Christian presence to soften up the West.”

In the Vatican, as Mr. Vinocur also reports, new voices begin to be heard: The foreign minister, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, recently issued a clarion call to “take clear and courageous positions in order to affirm Christian identity … because we know very well that radical Islam exploits anything that it interprets as a sign of weakness.” Monsignor Philippe Brizard, who heads a French charity that supports Christian communities in the Middle East, convened seven Christian patriarchs from the Middle East in Paris and declared that “Islam’s radicalization is the principal cause of the Christian exodus.”

The full truth is blurred by the fact that we are dealing with non-democratic societies that lack a free press. But the cause of these persecuted Christians is taken up by émigré Christian communities, which draw attention to the plight of their brethren. On September 21, for example, the National American Coptic Assembly issued a call to release a Catholic girl from the custody of an Islamic fundamentalist group, which abducted her last August. When her parents requested to meet their abducted daughter, they were threatened with detention.This and similar stories explain the Christian exodus from the cradle of their religion, but they also indicate a new Christian assertiveness.

Can any political conclusions be drawn from this new Christian assertiveness? Can this development have an influence on the Arab-Israeli conflict? Hardly.

In Israel itself, the Arab Christian minority is prospering, and its educational and health indicators are higher than those of the Jews. Their community is growing numerically but decreasing proportionately, because of a low birthrate and emigration, to a mere 2% of the population.Their Arab nationalism and identification with the Palestinian people have not been whittled down one bit by the Islamic radicalization, and Arab Christian members of the Knesset are among the most aggressive bash-Israel speakers.

Yet, privately, one hears the undercurrent of anxiety at this new wave of Islamic anti-“crusader,” anti-Christian rhetoric. The fact that a number of churches in the West Bank have been scorched by Islamic extremists as a reaction to the pope’s dictum cannot but stir even deeper anxiety among West Bank Christians. Even more significant is the fact that there have not been any Arab Christians among the suicide bombers or, indeed, among Arab terrorists in Israeli jails.

All this will have little impact, if at all, on the tragedy of the Middle East.The Christians are — except for Lebanon — a small dwindling minority living in a state of constant fear.They are trying to survive the present wave of animosity, and they certainly cannot afford to exercise any moderating influence, even had they wanted to do that, over Arab-Islamic governments. Indeed, these Christian communities, which managed to survive for generations in the region where Christianity began, are both forgotten and endangered.

Yet there is a lesson to be drawn here: Not all tensions in the Middle East can be ascribed to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. Not only Israel is endangered by the new Islamic radicalization. Not everything is as simple as described by the simplistic bash-Israel industry.

Mr. Rubinstein is president of the Inter-Disciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.