The price of vandalism

ON JUNE 21, after a large protest mass, 3,000 Christian Arabs carrying large crosses and waving yellow and white Vatican flags demonstrated outside a Catholic church near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. Three days earlier, part of the church was gutted in an arson attack and a verse from the Hebrew prayer denouncing “idol worship” was spray-painted in red on the church wall, suggesting that the attack was the latest in a series of hate crimes committed by Jewish extremists. Palestinians have long complained that Jewish settlers enjoy impunity under Israeli military control of the West Bank. But now, the attacks have spilled over into Israel and include important historical Christian sites – angering the Christian community and threatening to tarnish Israel's standing abroad. “This is a monstrous act,” said Maria Khoury, a retired mother of three from the northern city of Nazareth. “It is neither rational nor humane,” she said. The church, located in Tabgha near Tiberias, is known as the Church of Multiplication. Christians believe it is the site where Jesus performed the miracle of feeding 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish. It is one of the most popular destinations for Christian pilgrims visiting the Holy Land, and is also an important institution for the Arab Christian minority in Israel. Firefighters said the blaze ripped inside the limestone church just after 3 a.m. on June 18, inflicting severe damage to the compound and destroying the roof. Two people were taken to hospital and treated for smoke inhalation. The fire was extinguished before it reached the main prayer hall and the church's 5th century Byzantine mosaic floor. Father Matthias Karl, a monk at the church, said the entire entrance area, a souvenir shop, an office and a meeting room were all badly damaged. “Everything looks destroyed.” Karl tells The Jerusalem Report. He says the site, which used to host some 5,000 visitors daily, is now closed indefinitely. “We cannot reopen the church until we can be sure that the area is safe, and for the moment it is not,” Karl adds. “It's a terrible situation.” The police briefly detained a group of 16 Jewish youths, but released them shortly after. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the investigation is ongoing and that no further arrests have been made. Israeli leaders strongly condemned the arson. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was an attack “on us all” and vowed to bring those responsible to justice. “In Israel, freedom of worship is one of our core values and is guaranteed under the law. Those responsible for this despicable crime will face the full force of the law. Hate and intolerance have no place in our society,” Netanyahu said in a statement. President Reuven Rivlin who met Rev. Gregory Collins, the leader of the Order of St. Benedict in Israel, which runs the church, said Israel is “obligated to protect and preserve the holy sites, for all faiths.” Christian officials, however, accused Israeli security forces of not doing enough to protect Christian holy sites. Wadie Abu Nasser, an adviser for the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, said the financial damage to the church is “immense,” but the emotional damage is even greater. “Whoever committed this act did so with great intent,” Abu Nasser tells The Report. “This was no coincidence.” Last year, a group of Jewish youths attacked the Church's outdoor prayer area, hurled stones at the worshippers, destroyed a cross and threw benches into the lake. “In Israel, there is, unfortunately, a culture of religious and national intolerance and hatred,” contends Abu Nasser. “The biggest problem has been the recurrence of these attacks without convictions or charges. It demonstrates a failure in Israel's legal system that claims to be democratic and fair.” Since 2009, ultranationalist Jews have carried out attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank using a violent tactic known as “price tag” ‒ meant to make the Israeli government “pay” for the demolitions or evacuations of outposts in the West Bank. The assaults usually involve committing arson and spray-painting racist graffiti on homes, mosques and churches. But, more frequently, especially in the West Bank, trees are chopped down and cars belonging to Palestinians are torched or have their tires slashed. Israeli army bases have been vandalized, too. According to Tag Meir (meir is illuminate in Hebrew), an interreligious forum dedicated to combating racism in Israel, 43 Muslim and Christian places of worship have been targeted in price tag attacks since 2009, 12 have been Christian churches, monasteries and cemeteries. “These people want to start a religious war,” Gadi Gvaryahu, Chairman of Tag Meir, tells The Report. “They believe that this land belongs only to the Jews and want to destroy all non-Jewish institutions and symbols.” On February 7, 2012, the 11th century Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem, built on the site where Christians believe the olive tree used for Jesus's cross once stood, was defaced with graffiti that read, “Death to Christians.” The words “price tag” were scrawled on a car parked outside. Later that same month, vandals wrote, “Death to Christianity” on the walls of the Baptist church on Narkis Street in West Jerusalem. The words “price tag” were also scrawled on the walls. On September 4, 2012, the doors of the 19th century Latrun Monastery near Jerusalem were set on fire. The name of the illegal Migron outpost was scrawled alongside the phrase “Jesus is a monkey.” On May 31, 2013, “Christians are monkeys” and “Christians are slaves” and the name of the illegal outpost Havat Maon were scrawled on the walls of the Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. The Abbey is built on the site where many Christians believe the Virgin Mary died. This year, on February 26, the Greek Orthodox seminary in Jerusalem was targeted. It was set on fire and daubed with anti-Christian graffiti, damaging the entrance area and a bathroom. On August 21, 2013, a firebomb was hurled at the Roman Catholic monastery of Beit Jimal near the town of Beit Shemesh. The words “revenge” and “gentiles will perish” were painted in Hebrew on the wall. Many of the price tag perpetrators are ultra-nationalist Jewish zealots known as “Hilltop Youth” ‒ largely young males, donning skullcaps and sandals who are known for establishing outposts outside of the existing settlement blocks in the West Bank, in defiance of the government's official policies. Security sources say there are no more than several hundred in the rogue group, many of whom are known to the police by name. They do, however, enjoy wide and tacit support among segments of the 350,000 settlers living in the West Bank. In 2005, Israel evacuated some 8,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip amid strong right-wing resistance and driving a wedge between the government and settlers. Since then, attempts to demolish unauthorized outposts in the West Bank have been met with resistance and after-dark vandalism attacks against Palestinians or military installations for “selling out” the settlements cause. RIGHTS GROUPS say some 10,000 settlers live in West Bank outposts that dot the West Bank hills, many of which are expected to be authorized retroactively in negotiations with the government. Netanyahu, who is serving a fourth term as prime minister, heads a right-leaning coalition that strongly supports settlement expansion in the West Bank – a major point of contention with the Palestinians and the international community, who say that settlements, considered illegal under international law, deny the Palestinians a contiguous state and make a peace agreement, in the context of a two-state solution, difficult to achieve. Muslim and Christian clerics say attacks on places of worship and homes is a direct result of Israel's failure to convict perpetrators of crimes against non-Jewish citizens and the authorities must confront the fact that it has become a growing problem with grave consequences. “This phenomenon has been recurring since 2008 and no one has been charged,” Michel Sabah former Archbishop and Patriarch of Jerusalem, told reporters during the June 21 demonstration. “This means that the government is either complicit with these radicals or indifferent,” Sabah said. “Either way, they are responsible.” Back in September 2012, former minister of internal security Yitzhak Aharonovich announced the establishment of a new police unit to counter settler violence and called for a “zero-tolerance policy against terror, the desecration of Islamic religious institutions, attacks on symbols of governance and attacks commonly known as 'price tag.'” “We know who are committing these acts and plan to make more arrests shortly. We intend on putting these criminals behind bars,” Aharonovich said during a visit to a vandalized mosque in Fureidis, an Israeli Arab village. In July 2013, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon signed a declaration outlawing price taggers, which allows police to hold suspects for longer and prevent them from meeting their lawyers during questioning, among other provisions. The courts were also granted more power to issue more severe punishments, in measures similar to those used on Palestinian suspects. “Price tag perpetrators' conduct is identical to the conduct of modern terrorist groups, including ideological inspiration and covert action,” the Defense Ministry said at the time. Despite these measures and dozens of arrests, there have been few indictments and convictions. Prosecutors say many of the suspected perpetrators are minors, making the questioning of suspects difficult and leading the courts to grant them leniency. Security officials also say they have difficulty collecting evidence that will hold up in court and the suspects they interrogate rarely confess or cooperate. David Ha'ivri, a Jewish settler in the West Bank, says price taggers are “a small, unorganized group, who represent only a small fringe of an extreme element in Israeli society.” The difficulty in catching them, he says, has been the fact that they lack organization. “They lack proper leadership, making it extremely difficult for the authorities to find them,” Ha'ivri tells The Report. Analysts, however, point to the significant political clout of settler leaders and say the limited roundups and convictions of offenders is due, in large part, to the influence of pro-settler parties in Netanyahu's coalition who generally distance themselves from the attacks, but tend to sympathize with their cause. “They [price taggers] have support from the settlers, who in turn have a big influence in the government,” says Amnon Ramon, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (JIIS). “Whenever the Shin Bet [Israel Security Agency] claims to have amassed evidence against perpetrators, there is immense pressure from the government to release them,” he relates to The Report. To much fanfare this February, a West Bank settler was sentenced to three years in prison for torching two cars and vandalizing buildings with Stars of David graffiti in the West Bank village of Farata in 2013. The Lod District Court sentenced Binyamin Richter to an additional 12 months of probation and ordered him to pay 15,000 shekels ($3,900) in compensation to the vehicle owners. A month earlier, two other settlers, residents of the unauthorized outpost Havat Gilad were sentenced to 30 months in prison and given a one-year probation for their involvement in the attack. Two weeks before Pope Francis's high-profile visit to Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank in May 2014, “Death to Arabs and Christians and all those who hate Israel” was painted in Hebrew on a column at the Christian Notre Dame Center of Jerusalem, where the Pope was due to meet Netanyahu. The Catholic Church expressed alarm over the threats to Christians, and Fouad Twal, the Patriarch of Jerusalem said “the unrestrained acts of vandalism poison the atmosphere” ahead of the pontiff's visit. Israeli media reported that security services were on high alert during the Pope's entire visit, fearing Jewish radicals might carry out a major hate crime against Christians or institutions. CHRISTIAN CLERICS say that for years they have been targets of harassment, especially while walking in the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem, where they are routinely taunted and spat on by Jewish youths. Nazareth, Israel's largest Arab city, has a population of 80,000 people, a third of which are Christian Arabs. It is the boyhood town of Jesus, and home to the Church of the Annunciation, where Christians believe the Angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary while she was drawing water from the local well, revealing to her that she would bear Jesus. In 2006, a Jewish couple and their daughter threw firecrackers and gas canisters they had smuggled into the church at people from a balcony. They were stopped by worshippers before the police arrived. A standoff ensued between police and thousands of protesters who gathered inside the church. The suspects were led away, while club-wielding police fired stun grenades to keep back the mob. The church suffered only minor damage, but the attack spurred widespread stone-throwing riots between police and Christian and Muslim protesters, in which dozens people were hurt. “We are constantly worried for the future,” Maher Kassis, who owns a grocery shop in Nazareth's stone market, tells The Report. “We worry about radical Islamists driving us out or killing us, but we also worry about extremist Jews persecuting us and burning down our churches,” he says, with a shake of his head. Some 130,000 Christian Arabs live in Israel, making up less than two percent of the country's 8.3 million people. Historically they have been considered a minority within the larger Arab Muslim population of Israel, together making up 20 percent of the population. Like their Muslim counterparts, they complain of discrimination and difficulty integrating in an avowedly Jewish state. They say they are increasingly treated as a “fifth column” and a demographic threat. In recent years, there were initiatives within the Christian community, encouraged by the authorities, to recruit Christians into Israel Defense Force service from which they are exempt, but participation remains small. “No one is happy when a church or a mosque is vandalized or burned,” says Majeda Farraj, a pharmacist. “But it's not our biggest problem.” Officials point to the stalled peace process and say hate crimes are a symptom of the worsening relations between Jews and Arabs amid the deadlocked Palestinian-Israeli conflict. They say a continued failure to reach a peaceful resolution to this decades- old conflict means such attacks will remain commonplace. “This latest attack should be a wake-up call to the Israeli authorities,” asserts Issa Kassassieh, Palestinian Ambassador to the Vatican, to The Report. “The situation is heading further and further toward more intolerance. It stems from a sense of Jewish exclusivity, it's all ours. But this is the Holy Land and it belongs to all three monotheistic religions. No one can erase the other,” he adds. Ramon, the JIIS researcher, says the political situation has undoubtedly caused a sharp increase in radical thinking and intolerance among the Israeli public, but stopping these attacks requires more than just better policing. It involves some introspection. “In the religious ultra-nationalist sector, there are many rabbis who are preaching that Christianity is the ultimate enemy of Judaism and the Jewish people,” contends Ramon. “Rooted in Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, Christianity is viewed as the root of anti-Semitism and the origin of evil in the world. Evidently, young people take these messages very seriously.” Meanwhile, he says, the Jewish Israeli public feels more isolated than ever before. “Twenty or thirty years ago, most Israelis understood that we are a small country that depends on the outside world,” he says. “Now it does not matter what the world thinks.”

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