The Australian Jewish Association has condemned attacks on Christian graves in Jerusalem.
AJA president David Adler told Caldron Pool, this isn’t the first time vandals have attacked Christians sites, saying he hoped investigators are able to properly identify and apprehend those responsible.
The leader of the centre-right conservative group said the action will be condemned by the vast majority of Israelis, noting that Israel still remains a place of sanctuary for Christians in the Middle East.
Australian Jewish, Rebel News journalist, Avi Yemini, currently in Israel, also told Caldron Pool, “It’s an absolute disgrace and I hope they throw the book at anyone and everyone responsible when they catch them.”
Yemini added, “I imagine they will go hard, as the attack caused widespread outrage here in Israel.”
Thirty graves were found desecrated in an historic Protestant cemetery located on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion, a hill near the walls of the old city.
Based largely on video evidence, the Associated Press reported that two young men dressed in traditional Jewish clothing appear to have broken into the cemetery, then left a trail of debris and broken headstones behind after ‘knocking over stone crosses, smashing and stomping on tombstones.’
Despite an ongoing police investigation, the AP joined Nir Hasson, a journalist with Israel’s Haaretz News, linking the attacks to Ultra-Orthodox Jewish activists, who, the AP said, “oppose Christian prayer rights at the site, and have defaced church property on Mount Zion in the past years.”
Jerusalem’s British consulate expressed a similar sentiment, saying they were ‘dismayed at the attack,’ adding, “This is the latest in a string of attacks against Christians and their property in and around the Old City. The perpetrators of religiously motivated attacks should be held accountable.”
UK Chief Rabbi, Sir Ephraim Yitzchak Mirvis, was quick to condemn the vandalism, describing the destruction of Christian graves as a ‘shameful’ act of ‘disgraceful desecration,’ for which, ‘he hoped the perpetrators will be found and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.’
Israel’s Foreign Ministry echoed the wave of support for Christians responding to the senseless destruction on Twitter by reiterating Israel’s commitment to ‘freedom of worship and religion for all.’
IFM described the act as ‘immoral,’ calling it ‘an affront to religion,’ while asserting, ‘the perpetrators should be prosecuted.’
Church of England Archbishop, Justin Welby, issuing his support for Archbishop Hosam Naoum, and Jerusalem’s church leaders, ‘called for respect, protection, equality and justice for Jerusalem’s Christian community.’
Giving further voice to concerns about increasing tensions in Jerusalem, Łukasz Jasina, speaking for Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the PMFA appreciated Israel’s ‘unequivocal condemnation’ of the desecration, noting how close the attacks were to the graves of Oscar Schindler, and Poland’s Jewish Legion (Ander’s Army); who were evacuated after the National Socialists, and Communists raped, pillaged, and enslaved the nation.
The desecration of graves in the Middle East isn’t just isolated to attacks on Christians.
In July 2022, up to 81 Jewish graves were defaced or destroyed in Haskoy, Istanbul (Constantinople).
An investigation alleged, five Muslim children under the age of 18, ‘acting on the orders of adults,’ destroyed Jewish graves and damaged headstones.
The July attack, reportedly followed attacks on Christian and Yazidi burial grounds, where some ‘graves were opened, bodies taken out, and [as per Islamic practice] turned to point towards Mecca,’ Muhammad’s birthplace.
Such assaults on cemeteries are as cowardly as they are counter-productive.
The dead can’t answer back.
New assaults on Christian graves in Jerusalem, play into the hands of a hungry, one-eyed, anti-Israel, woke conglomerate, eager to use attacks like this to trumpet dubious claims about racism, apartheid, and ‘far-right extremism.’
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