In response to recent vandalism to Catholic Church property in Jerusalem Patriarch Fouad Twal said in an interview with AsiaNews that these acts “are a stain on the democracy that Israel claims it stands for”.
AsiaNews: Only three days ago, extremists daubed anti-Christian slogans on a church in Jerusalem; days before, on May 5, more Hebrew graffiti appeared on the Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem that read “death to the Arabs and Christians and all those who hate Israel”.
For a number of years now the Christian communities, churches and convents together with Muslim organizations have had to put up with these hate crimes, called “Tag Meir (English: price tag)” and although the leaders of the churches have constantly expressed their grievances , the phenomenon has not been stopped.
Patriarch Twal noted a certain laxity on the part of the government to prosecute the culprits: ” How can it be that they don’t catch the perpetrators – he said – Given that the vandals are largely unprosecuted, one must question the priority of the government to get to the bottom of the problem”. Full article is here.
