Graves desecrated in Christian cemetery near Lebanon border

The Christian cemetery that was vandalized is next to the Bar’am national park, located very close to the border with Lebanon.

By BEN HARTMAN
Jish (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Jish
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Unknown assailants vandalized some 15 graves at a Christian cemetery near the mainly Maronite village of Jish in the Galilee, the Northern District police said Wednesday.
District spokesman Ch. Supt Doron Malcha said that police received a call about the vandalism on Wednesday and that they don’t know when it took place and at the moment, why. Malcha said there is no graffiti or racist or nationalist messages anywhere that could suggest a possible “Price Tag” incident.
Malcha said the investigation is still in the opening phases, but that police “view it with the greatest of severity and it doesn’t matter if it was a Christian cemetery or a Jewish one or anything.”
He said that the district sent their chief of investigations to the scene as well as a crime scene forensic unit and that police have also “notified the other security services about this”, implying but not confirming that the Shin Bet General Security Services has been let in on the probe.
The Christian cemetery that was vandalized is next to the Bar’am national park, located very close to the border with Lebanon on the site of the pre-1948 Maronite village of Kafr Bir’im, and a 4th century Jewish village named Kfar Bar’am.
Maronite residents of the area have for years been involved with a legal dispute with the state in an attempt to regain land lost in the 1948 war and rebuild some of the village.