A minister resigns over the government’s policy in Israel and Gaza. And the shock is not so much that Baroness Warsi resigned, but that the government had a policy on Gaza over which one was able to protest.

Because the government seem as helpless as you or me. And it’s not just in that particular corner of the Middle East that violence is leaving its bloody scars. In Syria, the war continues, in Iraq, the illusion of peace is extinguished.

But those stories slip down the agenda, and each new insurgence, coup or catastrophe demotes the last to also run status. The fragile ceasefire and hope for peace in Gaza comes after horrendous loss of life and humanitarian vandalism in the previous month. I struggle to understand the right and wrong, whose side has the just cause and who is the aggressor, I want things nice and simple, I want options laid out on a menu, and if I don’t like what is chosen then I can protest. Then I could, if I were a government minister, tender an honourable resignation in support of a cause I am passionate about.

If only more people would resign, like Baroness Warsi, because of government inaction to support those who share their faith in the hardest corners of the earth.

Today two senior officials from Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge were found guilty of crimes against humanity. In their eighties they still remain resolute of their ignorance and innocence of the atrocities committed. In March I walked around the killing fields, I saw the fragments of bone still rising through the soil nearly four decades later, I walked around the school turned into a torture facility – a place where thousands passed through over four years but just 11 walked out alive. This was genocide, this was horrific: this was man killing man for no other reason than they could potentially pose a threat to one man’s idea of what society should be like. I wondered at the time whether it made it better or worse that this wasn’t killing an ethnic or religious group, it wasn’t like the holocaust or the Rwandan genocide, and that’s a moot point because it was horror laid on horror, a legacy that haunts a country grappling to find its way out of poverty, searching for ways to rebuild trust among its population – who had been taught to hate one another.

And I wished someone had resigned over that. What if there was a Cambodian in the British cabinet, or the American administration, who caught an inkling of what was happening and stood up and said no more. No more vacillation, no more vague good intentions, but something has to be done when children are being taken from their families and smashed against trees.

So often we call for advocacy on behalf of the voiceless regardless of their faith or ethnicity, and we should and it’s important. But those who share my faith are dying today, and we should speak for them. It is for them that I cry out, and for whom we should shout. And Christian politicians looking at the plight of Christians, especially in Iraq, should despair at the inaction of their government and resign.

The violence against Christians in Iraq is not negligible, it is horrific. The deaths caused by an insurgency seeking to create an Islamic State covering Iraq and Syria are not just of Christians, but as Christians we should be especially vocal in speaking out for their protection. This is not a simple act of self-interest, it is the defence of freedom which benefits all. The thousands of Yazidi Iraqis forced to shelter on a mountain top, and slowly dying because that is no place to shelter. They too need protection and advocacy, this morning I had no idea who they are, a small group which blends Christian and Zoroastrian beliefs and branded by ISIS as devil worshippers.

What’s happening in Iraq is genocide.

As Philip Jenkins writes: “We often read of the birth and growth of churches, very rarely of their deaths. In Mosul, however, we may be seeing the end of an astounding example of Christian continuity that lasted nearly two millennia.”

The US Catholic Bishop’s Conference wrote last week to National Security Advisor Susan Rice, they said: “The urgent situation in Iraq demands both our prayers and action. U.S. humanitarian assistance for the victims of the conflict is critical. In addition, our nation must take diplomatic measures. Our nation bears a special responsibility toward the people of Iraq.”

There is no doubt that this is a hard situation to respond to, and made harder by the legacy of US and UK military involvement in Iraq, the opposition to that involvement and the problems it created. Because of the loss of life British military action caused then there is understandable, but regretful, hesitancy about getting involved in any way now. But abstinence out of fear is shameful. Especially when we think of Canon Andrew White and others who are committed to serving in Iraq and have refused to move regardless of the threat to their life.

I know of no Yazidi politicians in the British government who can resign in solidarity and in protest that we are not doing enough, that we are not doing anything. But I know of plenty of Christians. I know of Christians committed to their faith and passionate about defending religious freedom, and above all, thinking death is never a suitable sentence for refusing to convert.

I wonder if there are any men or women of principle, who seeing the violence, hearing of the persecution, witnessing the horrors that scar the landscape of where the church has its ancient foundations, turn down the privileges and the prospects that their post affords and hand in their resignation. It is shameful that as a country we are doing nothing.

As Dan Hodges puts it, lets not wait for the books and the films, lets not wait to shed a tear as we read the next We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, or wait to stare in horror at the next Hotel Rwanda.

Is there an honourable man or woman in today’s government who cannot stand that we stand by while Christians are slaughtered and forced from their homes? Who instead of standing by, stands up and says that something must be done.

Who will resign out of protest that we are not coming to the aid of the Christians and the Yazidi: the persecuted and the hounded of Iraq?