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JERUSALEM, Jan. 4 (AP) — More than 30 graves at a historic Christian cemetery in Jerusalem were found collapsed and vandalized, the diocese said Wednesday, shocking the controversial city’s Christian minority.
Israel’s foreign ministry called the attack an “immoral act” and an “insult to religion”. Hossam Naum, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Jerusalem, called it a “clear hate crime”.
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The British consulate said it was just the latest in a series of attacks targeting the Christian community in the holy city of Jerusalem.
Police were dispatched to investigate the desecration at a Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Mount Zion, associated in Christian tradition with the site of the Last Supper that Jesus shared with his disciples the night before his crucifixion, is also sacred to both Jews and Muslims and has been used throughout the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At the center of competing religious claims.
Security camera footage that was widely circulated on Sunday showed two young men – both wearing skullcaps and tzitzit, the knotted ceremonial tassel worn by observant Jews – break into the cemetery, knock over the stone cross, smash Crushed and trampled on tombstones, leaving trails of splinters and broken tombstones.
Among the destroyed tombs was a 19th-century bust of Samuel Gobat, the second Protestant bishop of Jerusalem who died in 1879, the Anglican diocese said.
The graves of three Palestinian policemen who died during the British mandate were also vandalized.
The desecration of the cemetery should be seen as an ominous warning to “hate Christians”, the diocese warned.
“Many stone crosses were targeted by vandals, clearly demonstrating that these crimes were motivated by religious bigotry,” it said, urging authorities to redouble their efforts to find the perpetrators.
The Protestant cemetery on the revered Mount Zion outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls was built in 1848 as part of territory captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War. The cemetery houses dozens of Palestinian policemen who died during World Wars I and II, as well as Christian leaders who died in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Jewish extremists have vandalized church property on Mount Zion over the past few years. Jews consider Mount Zion the traditional burial site of the biblical King David, and some ultra-Orthodox and nationalist activists have opposed Christians’ right to pray at the site. A Jewish seminary called Diaspora Yeshiva has taken over many buildings in the Mount Zion compound.
About 16,000 Christians live in Jerusalem, most of them Palestinians. Israel claims Jerusalem as its eternal capital, while the Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their desired independent state. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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