Christian center set on fire, vandalized in Jerusalem hate crime attack

Damage done to a building belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church near the Old City; graffiti denigrating Jesus was sprayed on one of the walls.

A building belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem was set on fire and vandalized early on Thursday in a hate crime attack.

Firefighters arrived at the scene and extinguished the flames, and classified the fire as arson after an investigation into whether the fire was deliberately set. The forces also found hate graffiti denigrating Jesus sprayed on one of the walls.

Damage was done to parts of the building, but no one was hurt.

The structure, which is used as for religious studies, is located near the Old City's Jaffa Gate.

A mosque in a West Bank village near Bethlehem was torched warly on Wednesday, Palestinain media reported. The report said that settlers that entered Kafr Jab'a also sprayed hate graffiti on the building, including "we want the redemption of Zion," and "revenge."

Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said in a statement that both Wednesday and Thursday's attacks were the works of "Israeli terrorists ... protected by a government that claims exclusivity over this land."

Israeli Arab MK Ahmed Tibi echoed Erekat's comments, calling the price tag attacks "terrorism in all respects" and decrying how "criminals still roam freely without any deterrence or punishment."

"If you can kill a Palestinian or cut down an olive tree without penalty," Tibi added, "then you can burn mosques and churches without fear."

Mount Zion, the area where the suspected attack occurred, is one of the more vulnerable areas concerning price tag attacks. In the past two years, there have been dozens of various hate crimes, including the assault of Christian clergymen, graffiti, punctured tired, desecrated grave-sites, smashed gravestones and more.

In May 2014, a nearby church was set aflame shortly after Pope Francis' visit. In 2013, vandals smashed Ottoman ceramic tiles at King David's Tomb, thus destroying the last traces to the compound's Muslim past. Later that year, vandals smashed gravestones of prominent historical figures at a Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion.

Church leaders have often expressed concern about monks and clergy's fears of walking around Mount Zion in uniform due to spitting and harassment.

"In Mount Zion, might makes right, where a bully can do what he wants. There isn't a monk here who doesn't get spat upon - it's part of the job description," a senior official of one of the local churches told Haaretz months ago.

Church leaders have often blamed students at local Yeshivas, visiting from the Diaspora, for the attacks. In recent years, the visiting Yeshiva students have been identified with the "hilltop youth," some of whom have been expelled from the territories. The head of the Yeshiva denied the allegations.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.644285

So a Palestinians claims it is Israeli's who torched the church and you never hear of Muslims ever doing that. These attacks are terrorist attacks and should find those guilty and convict them, but lets face some real facts here. israel is about one of the only safe places for Christians in the Middle East.

Jewish extremest hate Chistians. Before the Pope's visit last year, this is what Christians in Israel said:

Christians in Israel and Palestine fear an escalation of violence against them after a spate of vandalism in Jerusalem churches by hardline Jewish nationalists ahead of Pope Francis's visit this month.

Earlier this week vandals wrote "Death to Arabs and Christians" in Hebrew on the Vatican's Notre Dame centre in Jerusalem's Old City and on Thursday night offensive graffiti was written on a wall close to the Romanian Orthodox church.

Pope Francis is due to stay at the Notre Dame centre during his two-day trip to Jerusalem and Bethlehem from 24 to 26 May.

Both incidents come just weeks after a spate of attacks against Christians in Galilee, where a place of worship was vandalised and stones thrown at pilgrims. A radical rabbi also sent a threatening letter to a priest in Nazareth.

"It is increasing daily because nobody is doing anything about it. The police must know who these people are," said Jamal Khader, the head of the Latin Patriarchate seminary and spokesman for the pope's visit to Palestine.

Khader said there were no safety fears in terms of the pope's visit, but he dismissed criticism by some commentators in Israel that graffiti was a minor offence being blown out of proportion.

"Should we wait until they start attacking Christians? What we have seen in Rwanda, in South Africa, even in Germany in the early 30s is that … a wave of hatred, of demonising the other, can be followed by attacks," he said.

In a statement earlier this week the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem said that Christians in Israel felt neither safe nor protected and called on the government to take action against rightwing Jewish extremists.

Acts of vandalism and violence against Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank are known as "price-tagging", a campaign of intimidation that extremists claim is the price Palestinians should pay for Israeli government crackdowns or restrictions on settlement activity.

In recent days senior politicians in Israel, including the justice minister, Tzipi Livni, and the internal security minister, Yitkhak Aharonovich, have argued that rightwing groups carrying out such attacks should be classified as terrorists. Their stance follows extremist attacks on Israeli soldiers bin the radical settlement of Yitzhar.

Recent attacks, however, have specifically targetted Christians and have taken place in the heart of the Old City.

"It's not clear why this focus now … against Christians," Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman, said.

Rosenfeld dismissed speculation that police were expecting an organised attack by rightwing groups to coincide with the pope's visit. He said numerous arrests had been made in response to recent attacks in the West Bank, although not yet relating to the incidents in Jerusalem.

"We're cracking down hard on suspects … against both the Christian and Muslim community," he said.

A senior official with Palestinian Liberation Organisation said the attacks demonstrated that the extreme right considered Christians and Palestinians as one and the same.

"It's not like attacks on churches are something new. Here, Christians are not seen as Christians, they're seen as Palestinians. Churches are seen as an important example of Palestinian presence. Even though there are many foreign Christians here … [the extremists] don't make the distinction," he said.

Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for the Israeli NGO B'Tselem, which documents violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, agreed that the attacks were not a surprise.

"There is a lot of hatred of Christians amongst the Israeli extreme right. It is not an unusual situation. But it is high profile, when a church or a monastery gets attacked it raises their profile," she said.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/09/christians-israel-palestine-rise-violence-pope-visit

What do Christians feel in other parts of the Middle East?
Seriously how mant Jewish extremist are there compared to Islamic in the world?
Seriously it is wrong if there is any extremism against Christians, but again lets place this into perspective in reagards to what has and is happenning daily to Christians in the Middle East.

Answsers on a post card please