It’s Thursday (or Friday or any other day) and another boycott against Israel is being declared – by a union in Ontario, university teachers in Britain, and church organizations everywhere.

Not a word about Iran, whose president denies the Holocaust but seeks to complete it by “erasing” Israel from the map; not a whisper about the genocide in Darfur; no mention of Tibet or of beheadings in front of cameras in Iraq – only one spot on earth deserves to be boycotted or divested by “progressive” bodies.

And all this is happening while a new Israeli government is adopting and following a policy of two states for two peoples and is ready to extend the pull back from Gaza to the West Bank. No wonder that these boycotts – aided and abetted by academics from Israel’s top universities – do not influence Israeli public opinion and lead nowhere except for anti-Semitic outbursts such as the one that took place in the disastrous 2001 Durban conference on Racism, in which Israel was bashed in a hysterical fascist-like gathering of nongovernmental organizations pretending to be human rights champions.

The great paradox is the case of the Christian organizations bashing Israel: Hardly a week passes without such action. The latest one was proclaimed by the executive committee of the World Council of Churches at its annual meeting in Geneva on May 16-19, 2006. This body declared that “Israel bears the burden of responsibility for the present crisis in the Middle East”; not a whiff of Hamas or terror against Israelis contaminates its august pronouncements and its unmitigated accusations against the Jewish state. If you believe these one-sided allegations, you will believe anything. The next in line this weekend is the Presbyterian Church in its meeting in Alabama.

The paradox lies in the fact that these bodies turn a blind eye to the fate of Christians in Muslim countries. The latest facts and figures are astounding: The French daily Le Figaro (May 26, 2006) spoke of a grave concern in the Vatican about the diminution of Catholics in the Middle East: In Iran, their number decreased tenfold within 30 years and a similar decrease is cited with regard to Syria, the Palestinian authority, and Egypt. “Saudi Arabia,” writes the author Ivan Rioufol, “which finances the construction of mosques everywhere, does not permit within its border the building of a Christian chapel.”

He goes on to mention the horrific facts: 16 Christians assassinated in the February riots in the northern, Muslim part of Nigeria; an Afghan who found refuge in Italy after being condemned to death for converting into Christianity; 150 churches and convents destroyed in Kosovo since 1999; an Algerian law, enacted in March 2006, punishing by jail anyone who convinces a Muslim to convert to another religion – and so on.

Indeed, in the Middle East, this persecution of Christians – both Arab and non-Arab – and the resulting exodus acquire a tragic dimension, as the region is the cradle of Christianity, and the communities, which are fast dwindling, have been living in their countries for centuries.

The paradox is enhanced by the fact that the only country where the Christian community is not decreasing is the much-maligned, always-reviled, often-boycotted country. In Israel, the Christian-Arab community has grown in the last decades, despite emigration and a low birth rate (1.8% as against 4.4% in the Muslim community). In the last 30 years of which Le Figaro speaks, the Christian-Arab population grew to 117,000 in 2004 from 80,000 in 1976 (plus 27,000 in the growing non-Arab Christian community). Of course there are problems: Christian Arabs suffer from the same governmental under-budgeting and under representation as their Muslim brethren and they share with them a bitter animosity and grievances against the Jewish state. But, nevertheless, their achievements are amazing.

Christian schools are prospering and are partially subsidized by the state; a Christian Arab sits in the Supreme Court. Christian Arabs outrank Jews in Israel in low child-mortality rates – 2.9 per thousand in 2004 as in Scandinavia and Japan, lower then the American rate of 7.0 in 2002, as against 3.1 in the Muslim community and 3.1 among Jews. And their educational standards are equally remarkable – their success rate in the end-of school matriculating exams is 70% as against 68% among Jews and 52% among Muslims.

How do you square these figures with the state of Christians in Arab countries never reprimanded by Christian organizations?

Indeed, bash-Israelism has been transformed in recent years from a political platform to an article of faith and an irresistible impulse. It should be seen as an incurable sickness.

Mr. Rubinstein is president of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.