Earlier this week the BBC and Al Jazeera both reported on armed Iraqi citizen volunteers who helped government forces fight off ISIS in Amerli. Today, the AP is out with a story about Christians in the Middle East who are arming themselves, carrying weapons with them during daily tasks and heading to the hills at night to defend their communities as violence continues to rage around them. Genocide is at their front door and they're doing everything they can to stop it from coming in.
Every day around sunset, dozens of residents of this small Lebanese Christian village on the border carry their automatic rifles and deploy on surrounding hills, taking up positions and laying ambushes in case Muslim extremists from neighboring Syria attack.
"We all know that if they come, they will slit our throats for no reason," said one villager as he drove through the streets of Qaa, an assault rifle resting next to him.
Now, for the first time since the Lebanese civil war ended in 1990, Lebanese Christians are rearming and setting up self-defense units to protect themselves, an indication of the growing anxiety over the expanding reach of radical Islamic groups.
So far, the terror army ISIS has slaughtered and tortured thousands of Christians in Iraq and Syria.
H/T Chelsea Vicari