It's been almost a week since Ted Cruz was booed off the stage at a Washington, D.C. dinner that was organized to raise awareness about the desperate  plight of Christians in the Middle East.

Cruz had been invited to give the keynote address at the Sept. 10 In Defense of Christians dinner -- the highlight of a historic conference that brought Patriarchs and other church leaders from across the Middle East to Washington, D.C., where they updated U.S. lawmakers on the humanitarian crisis that gravely threatens their people.  

In his opening remarks, Cruz asserted that Christians had no greater ally in the region than Israel, and as he pressed this point, and reportedly  appeared disinclined to move on to the topic at hand, he was heckeled and booed. Before he left the podium, the Texas senator said the following:

“If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you.” 

Yesterday, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat addressed the simmering controversy, with sharp words for all the leading actors in the U.S. policy debate who just aren't that into the subject  of Christian persecution in the Middle East. That rebuke included Cruz and his supporters. 

According to Douthat, the  Left prefers to defend the rights of other groups:

The political left in the West associates Christian faith with dead white male imperialism and does not come naturally to the recognition that Christianity is now the globe’s most persecuted religion. And in the Middle East the Israel-Palestine question, with its colonial overtones, has been the left’s great obsession, whereas the less ideologically convenient plight of Christians under Islamic rule is often left untouched.

Meanwhile, Iraqi and Syrian Christians' apparent lack of influence leaves "America’s strategic class" unmoved:

So whether we’re pursuing stability by backing the anti-Christian Saudis or pursuing transformation by toppling Saddam Hussein (and unleashing the furies on Iraq’s religious minorities), our policy makers have rarely given Christian interests any kind of due.

But you would think that U.S. conservatives, who are typically much more religious than other players in the U.S. foreign policy debate, would see things differently. Right? 

Wrong, Douthat argued, though he didn't really address the recent surge of Beltway advocacy on behalf of Christian persecution. 

the ancient churches of the Middle East (Eastern Orthodox, Chaldean, Maronites, Copt, Assyrian) are theologically and culturally alien to many American Catholics and evangelicals. And the great cause of many conservative Christians in the United States is the state of Israel, toward which many Arab Christians harbor feelings that range from the complicated to the hostile.

Douthat speculated that some of the church leaders from the Middle East who attended the Washington, D.C. conference, may have said some harsh things about Israel  Cruz probably wanted to address the record. 

Still, Cruz was out of line, in Douthat's view Further, he called on the senator's defenders to set aside Beltway politics, if only for a moment, and take a fresh look at the harsh reality of Christian persecution in the Middle East.

Israel is a rich, well-defended, nuclear-armed nation-state; its supporters, and especially its American Christian supporters, can afford to allow a population that’s none of the above to organize to save itself from outright extinction without also demanding applause for Israeli policy as the price of sympathy and support.

Is it possible to agree with Douthat's conclusion without being accused of endorsing attacks on Israel or tolerating anti-Semitism?  

I hope so, because he makes a good case for letting an invisible and beleagured religious minority grab a  moment or two in the spotlight to shock the conscience of the world's leading superpower. And the unexpected confrontation between Cruz and the conference participants points to the divide between the Washington policy establishment and a fading, Christian community far away from the corridors of power.