Holy Land Christians say attacks rising in far-right Israel
LA TimesLatin Patriarch of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa leads the Easter Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Old City of Jerusalem. “The frequency of these attacks, the aggressions, has become something new,” Pizzaballa said during Easter week from his office, tucked in the limestone passageways of the Old City’s Christian Quarter. “Israel’s commitment to freedom of religion has been important to us forever,” said Tania Berg-Rafaeli, the director of the world religions department at the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Their influence has empowered Israeli settlers seeking to entrench Jewish control of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, alarming church leaders who see such efforts — including government plans to create a national park on the Mount of Olives — as a threat to the Christian presence in the holy city. Israeli police said they had “thoroughly investigated regardless of background or religion” and made “speedy arrests.” The Jerusalem municipality is boosting security for Orthodox Easter processions this weekend and creating a new police department to handle religiously motivated threats, said Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum.
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