Hadash-Ta’al parliamentary group has presented a bill to increase penalties for desecrating religious symbols of all three monotheistic faiths: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The bill was presented on Wednesday, following a wave of attacks on sacred places in Israel, including churches and mosques.
These attacks, Hadash-Ta’al said, have threatened public order and personal security, as well as harmed the status of various religious sites. The goal of the legislation is to protect all places of worship, y raising the penalties for desecration, the hope is to deter offenders.
“For years, we have witnessed attacks on mosques and other religious property without interference,” MK Ahmad Tibi (Hadash-Ta’al) said. “There have been no arrests and no enforcement. This behavior is encouraging and perpetuating violence that cannot be tolerated. We need to take a stronger stance against hate crimes like these in general and impose specific penalties as a deterrent.”
Police on Wednesday arrested five Orthodox Jews on suspicion of spitting at Christian worshippers in the Old City of Jerusalem, amid a rise in incidents targeting priests and pilgrims. At the same time, racist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said in an interview: “I still think spitting at Christians is not a criminal case. Not everything justifies an arrest.” Before become minister, Ben Gvir in the past justified spitting toward Christians as “an ancient Jewish custom.”
A man seen spitting at Christians in Jerusalem during a parade for the festival of Sukkot on October 4, 2023 (Photo: Israel Police)
Channel 12 reported that some of those arrested were students of Rabbi Natan Rothman, the brother of Religious Zionism party MK Simcha Rothman. Both Rothmans took part in the procession through the Old City. In a video posted online by a reporter for the Haaretz daily on Monday, a group of Christians exiting a church carrying a wooden cross were seen walking by a group of religious Jews heading in the other direction. Several of the Jews then spit on the ground in the direction of the Christians as they pass.
In January, teens vandalized dozens of Christian graves in the Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion, including toppling a large masonry cross. A month before, the Maronite community center in Ma’alot-Tarshiha suffered vandalism. Discriminatory graffiti also appeared on Jerusalem’s Armenian community buildings, and acts of vandalism have affected the Church of the Flagellation.
In June, hundreds of Christians, Muslims and Jews protested Sunday at the Christian monastery Stella Maris in Haifa against the recent trend of Jewish pilgrims praying at the site. Hadash-Ta’al chairman, MK Ayman Odeh, Hadash MK Aida Touma-Sliman, Hadash chairman and former MK Issam Makhoul and several Hadash and Communist Party of Israel activists participated in the rally. The incidents in Haifa came amid increasing reports of Jews harassing Christians in Jerusalem.
Over the years, various Muslim cemeteries have also been described. In 2010, for example, graves were damaged at Jerusalem’s Mamilla Cemetery, a centuries-old Islamic burial site.
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=31076
