ROME — The Times of Israel has denounced growing anti-Christian violence in the Holy Land, some of which has been blamed on “Jewish extremists.”
Last Friday, Christian Churches in Jerusalem appealed to the government to ensure freedom to worship during Holy Week and Easter in the face of “mounting violence and acts of desecration over the past year,” the newspaper reported.
Catholic Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, presided over Palm Sunday Mass at the packed Church of the Holy Sepulchre, venerated as the burial place of Jesus and scene of his resurrection.
Jerusalem’s Christian leaders “tell of a deteriorating atmosphere of harassment, apathy from authorities, and a growing fear that incidents of spitting and vandalism could turn into something far darker,” the paper has revealed.
In February, for instance, an American Jewish tourist vandalized a statue of Jesus in the Church of the Flagellation, which marks the second station of the cross in the traditional Via Crucis. The man was part of a “group of Jewish extremists” who were eventually apprehended by the Israel Security Forces (ISF). Breitbart.
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