Church criticizes Israel’s ‘heavy-handed restrictions’ on Easter
Jerusalem – Nothing about the attack or what happened since surprised Miran Krikorian. The Armenian owner of Taboon and Wine Bar in the Old City of Jerusalem was not surprised to receive a call the night of January 26 that a mob of Israeli settlers was attacking his bar in the Christian Quarter and shouting “Death to Arabs … Death to Christians.”
It didn’t surprise him how little effort the police made to catch the perpetrators; after some press about the attack and a lack of arrests, police told him two months later they detained three of the suspects among the mob. But they also asked for his surveillance video, despite the videos being already online and surveillance cameras omnipresent in the Old City.
A couple of days later, Armenians leaving a memorial service in the Armenian Quarter say they were attacked by Israeli settlers carrying sticks. An Armenian was pepper-sprayed as settlers scaled the walls of the Armenian convent, trying to take down its flag, which had a cross on it. When Armenians chased them away, the settlers began shouting: “Terrorist attack,” prompting nearby border police to draw their guns on the Armenians, beating and detaining one of them.
“Instead of [the soldiers] calming or condemning [the settlers], I was looking into the eyes of the soldier and telling him to calm down,” one of the attacked Armenian youth told Al Jazeera.
Hostility by fundamentalist Jews towards Jerusalem’s Christian community is not new, and it is not just Armenian Christians who suffer from it. Priests of all denominations describe being spat at for years. Since 2005, Christian celebrations around Holy Week, particularly Holy Fire Saturday, have brought military barricades and harsh treatment from soldiers and settlers alike, with the number of worshippers allowed inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre drastically limited, from as many as 11,000 historically during the Holy Fire ceremony to now 1,800 since last year, with authorities citing safety concerns.
But since Israel’s new government – the most right wing and religious in its history – came to power, incidents against Christians in Jerusalem have reportedly become more violent and common. At the beginning of the year, 30 Christian graves at the Protestant Mount Zion Cemetery were desecrated. In the Armenian Quarter, vandals spray-painted “Death to Arabs, Christians and Armenians,” on the walls.
At the Church of the Flagellation, someone attacked a statue of Jesus with a hammer. Last month, an Israeli came to the Church of Gethsemane during Sunday religious services and tried to attack the priest with an iron bar. Being spat and shouted at by Israelis has become, for some Christians, “a daily occurrence”.
Struggling with ‘Messianic syndrome’
Most of the time, victims of these incidents say little is done by police to catch or punish attackers.
“My fear is that these perpetrators are known, but they enjoy impunity,” said Munib Younan, bishop emeritus of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. “That’s the reason they are doing this.”
Church and community leaders note that police do little to investigate, and dismiss or minimise the religious and ideological motivations behind these attacks, typically saying the perpetrators suffer from mental illness.
“The man who tried to [throw] tomatoes in our Church of Gethsemane in 2020, it was the same – he was taken for a while, and then he was declared mentally ill. So, what can we do?” remarked Friar Francesco Patton, custodian of the Holy Land.
Forced to take matters into his own hands, Patton, who is tasked with protecting some 80 sites in Jerusalem, says the Franciscans have reluctantly set up cameras in all corners of their holy sites, which are becoming more closed off from the public due to the persistent attacks.
“This is not the Franciscan spirituality … of welcoming,” he said. “But we have to take care of the [holy] places and people who come to pray and worship.”
Ideologically, the primary source for this targeting of Christians and their holy sites comes from the education of certain ultra-religious Jewish groups, according to community and church leaders. Most attacks come from a small minority of teenage yeshiva students, they say.
“Their mind is obsessed with the ‘Messianic syndrome’. They want to take over the whole land,” said Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem. “When you see young people, 15 or 16 years old, and they do all sorts of things and they’re not afraid, someone is behind it.”
The targeting of Christian symbols – especially the cross, with harassers often calling Christians “pagans” or “idol worshippers” – isn’t new either, but never have the attackers felt more emboldened than under the new government. After a recent spitting incident, an argument ensued, and the settler flashed his gun at the Christians. As a friend of theirs put it, the message was clear: “I can do anything I want and claim self-defence.”
“The minister of national security is a lawyer who used to defend extremist Jews attacking Christian and other sites,” said one Armenian youth who says they were attacked in January, referring to Itamar Ben-Gvir. “What do you expect when the highest-ranking official in the equation is the most extremist?”
Many community members and leaders like Latin Patriarch Pizzaballa expect the violence to continue or worsen in the weeks ahead. Some Christians, inevitably, will leave. But through the pressure, a collective identity is strengthening – both as part of the longstanding “mosaic” of Jerusalem’s multiethnic, multireligious character, and as Christians in the Holy Land.
“Occupation makes people very cold, very separate. ‘I am [Syriac], I am Catholic, I am Orthodox, I am Evangelist’,” remarked Hani the restaurant owner. “But with the threats, the violence, the vandalism, now the people are coming together. The churches are waking up. We were blind for 50 years, but no more.”