Really? Do you have a link that I can look at?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2ZVihACwQ0
Cruz barely mentioned the issue at hand during the time he was speaking and keeps trying to goad the audience. He just kept throwing out platitudes designed to belittle what is happening to Christians in the Middle East by bringing other things up. This is an intentional form of disrespect. He would never address another audience like this. As soon as anyone made the slightest negative noise towards his off topic bait, he launched into a insult laced harangue of the audience instead of ignoring it like a speaker who was sincere about the issue would have. It’s undeniable that he was trying to provoke the audience. Had they listened without any jeers longer, he simply would have continued to drone on off topic and escalate the provocations until he got the reaction he was looking for.
Note at 3:30, the audience cheered his pro-Jewish statements, but then he just went back to off topic provoking. Now it’s over four minutes into the speech and Cruz has barely mentioned Christian persecution. Most of the speech has been a series of disconnected provocations designed to anger the mostly non-American audience by telling them that their persecution is not important in and of itself. In between provocations, Cruz takes abnormally long pauses and glares angrily at the audience, hoping for heckling. That’s when the audible shouts of “talk about Christians” start and Cruz storms off.
Over and over, Cruz used leftist language about Christians “consumed with hate” because they have different view point of Middle Eastern politics than he does. Then he tries to play the victim and pretend he is genuinely offended that a few people heckled his nonsense. He leaves by telling Christians who are being genocided by Muslim terrorists that he won’t stand with them because he thinks that they do not have the same views on Israel as he does. Really over the top behavior from Cruz that calls into question his character. Do people being slaughtered need to be interrogated for politically incorrect thoughts before you help them?
Note that no one in the audience said a damn thing bad about Israel or Jews, they just booed when Cruz over and over told them they are “haters” for no reason.
He also made some utterly false statements — that Syria’s government is trying to “destroy” religious minorities — Syria’s government is largely a coalition of religious minorities and secular people trying to defend themselves from genocide by al-Qaeda types. That there is no difference between ISIS and Hezbollah — except for he fact that one kills Christians and the other defends them, that’s a pretty darned important difference if you are a Christian in Syria. And yes, that Israel has been the “best friend” of Christians in the Middle East. Israel treats Christians pretty well, but not as well as secular Arab nationalists governments did, under which Christians were granted genuine equality that they can never really have in a state with an official non-Christian religious identity(nothing wrong with Israel being a Jewish state, but it’s not a state where all religions are equal). All of these statements are ludicrous to anyone who knows about the current conflicts and history of the region.
This video is also a good illustration of why Cruz rubs a lot of people the wrong way. He can come across as very unctuous and arrogant. It’s too bad because Cruz is so good on most issues and understands the need to play political hardball and how to do it.
This stunt permanently cost Cruz any support from Americans who are Eastern Christians. It was also received very negatively by young Evangelicals, for whom persecution of Christians is a big cause. Many people who are from Eastern European ethnic backgrounds will also see what Cruz did here as indicative of him probably not liking them much either, since they may have relatives who are Eastern Christians even if they themselves are Protestant or Catholic.
But it helped him get money from pro-open borders neoconservative billionaires like Sheldon Adelson and Paul Singer, which is why he did it.