For several weeks, members of the small Christian community in Jerusalem’s Old City say they have felt under pressure from what they say is growing harassment and intimidation from violent Jewish ultranationalists.
Earlier this month, a man later identified by church authorities as a Jewish radical was wrestled to the ground and detained after he allegedly vandalised a statue of Jesus in the Church of the Flagellation. The church stands at the place where Christ is held to have taken the cross after being condemned to death by crucifixion.
“This is the church commemorating the suffering of Jesus, and exactly here, doing that is something very bad, very bad,” said Father Eugenio Alliata, responsible for the archeological collections at Terra Sancta Museum.
That incident followed a series of others, including one in which graffiti reading “Death to Armenians” and “Death to Christians” were scrawled in Hebrew on the walls of the Armenian Convent of Saint James, early in January.
“In the past two months, I would say, since the beginning of the new government, attacks like this are becoming very, very usual,” said Miran Krikorian, a restaurant owner in the Old City. “And the problem is that we are feeling that there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Israeli police say they have stepped up patrols around Christian sites in Jerusalem as churches report abuse by Jews following the swearing-in of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government.
Read the article by Ammar Awad in Sight Magazine (Reuters).