More than 30 graves at a historic Christian cemetery in Jerusalem were found toppled and vandalised, the Anglican diocese said on Thursday, jolting the Christian minority in the contested city.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the attack an “immoral act” and “an affront to religion”. Jerusalem’s Anglican Archbishop Hosam Naoum called it a “clear hate crime”. The British consulate said it was just the latest in a string of assaults on the Christian community in the holy city of Jerusalem.
Police officers were sent to the Protestant Cemetery on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion to investigate the profanation. 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 Jews and Muslims and has been at the centre of competing religious claims throughout the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Widely shared security camera footage on Monday showed two young men — both wearing a Jewish skullcap and tzitzit, the knotted ritual fringes worn by observant Jews — breaking into the cemetery, knocking over stone crosses and smashing and stomping on tombstones, leaving a trail of debris and broken headstones.