Destruction and Desecration of Christian Holy Plac

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Following the establishment of Israel, the Israeli authorities continued their
destruction and

desecration of Christian holy places.



- Israeli forces seized several Christian convents and churches on Mt. Zion in
Jerusalem.

They looted the ornaments and church golden and silver objects and transformed
those

convents and churches into military posts for Jewish armed forces. An
eyewitness who

recently reported about the Church of St. Saviour on Mt. Zion stated the
following:



The interior of the Church of St. Saviour is a scene of total devastation. The
carved and

gilded altar has been wrecked, and an altar painting lies destroyed on the
upper floor. The

oil paintings that decorated the upper part of the north and south walls have
been torn out

of their frames leaving only tattered shreds of canvas. Many of the Kutahya
tiles, brought

especially from Turkey by Armenian pilgrims in the early eighteenth century
have been

ripped from the walls; those that have not been stolen lie smashed on then
ground, along

with a tangled mass of broken church furniture. The valuable collection of old
church

vestments has completely disappeared.



- Israeli forces desecrated and vandalized the American and the Greek Orthodox

cemeteries on Mt. Zion in Jerusalem. Fourteen tombs of Christian patriarchs were

smashed open and their contents desecrated. Two were demolished and excavated
to a

depth of 6 feet. All marble stones were broken.

In the Greek Orthodox cemetery on Mt. Zion, practically every tomb in the
cemetery was

smashed open. Fragments of marble crosses, angel’s wings and inscriptions lie

inextricably mixed with human skeletons and skulls, blackened tree stumps, and
the

remains of rockets and shells.

The Catholic cemetery on Mt. Zion received the same treatment from the
Zionists. The very

reverent Father Andres, Procurator-General in the Holy Land since 1962,
published an

article in the Catholic Journal, La Terra Sainte, March 1968 in which he
described the

shocking acts of vandalism and desecration of the Catholic Cemetery. He
published

several photos showing the evil deeds of profanation. Father Andres
states: “The Jews

actually dragged the corpses out of the tombs and scattered the coffins and
remains of the

dead all around the cemetery.”

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Monseigneur Hakim, Archisbop of the Greek Catholic Diocese of Acre, Haifa, and

Nazareth and the rest of Galilee (now Patriarch Maximos V. Hakim), wrote a
letter to Dr.

Hertog, Minister of Religious Affairs in Israel, describing what he saw in the
village of Ikret

as follows:



I return from my visit to Ikret, a 100% Catholic village and it grieves me to
say, I return

heartbroken. The scenes of demolish houses, streets blocked with stones and
timber, and

tottering walls- these atrocities, added to the memory of my previous visits to
this village

which was in the past alive with its inhabitants, have filled my heart with
anguish and

distress. When I reached the summit of the village and stood in its Churchyard.
I felt the

tears in my eyes as I saw the Vicarage in rubble, that beautiful residence that
used to fill

our hearts with joy and glory, and, which was erected with its three spacious
rooms above

the school, all were demolished. The Church, I could not gain access to it
since its

entrances were obstructed with stones; but I do not doubt that the collapse of
the adjacent

houses has inflicted upon it serious damage. Climbing the ruins surrounding the
church. A

saw a deep cleft in the upper part of the eastern wall. The cross that was
standing erect

above the dome was smashed. I cannot tell whether it was accidental or
deliberate. The

belfry was void of its bell, which was pulled down by the inhabitants of the
adjacent Jewish

colony to be used in announcing the times for their meals.



In October 1953, Israeli forces destroyed the Christian village of Kafr Bur’om
in Galilee

together with its churches, schools, and other buildings and scattered the
Christian

inhabitants to other parts of Galilee.



On April 16th 1954, the Zionists launched an attack against the cemetery of the
Greek

Catholic Community in Haifa. Israeli hysteria against Christian was exhibited
in that

cemetery by group dancing on the Christian tombs, destruction of many tombs and
digging

out the remains, 73 crosses and 50 statues of angels were smashed.

[gelatik]

In July 1954, a group of Israelis attacked a Christian religious procession of
the Carmelite

Fathers and the Christian community of Haifa near the cave of St. Elijah on Mt.
Carmel near

Haifa. The Christian religious procession was broken up, many of the crosses
carried by

the procession were smashed and many Christians were injured.





The New York Times of July 12, 1961 published a dispatch from Jerusalem under
the title

“Church in Israel Shut By Stonings: Jewish Fanatics Attack Christian Services.”
The

dispatch states:



Services of a Christian Fundamentalist missionary group in Jerusalem had been
called off

following stone-throwing attacks by Jewish religious fanatics…Since April 5
every

Wednesday night and Sunday night service in the tiny stone church in the former
Greek

colony here has been disrupted by boisterous crowds outside the church compound.



The crowds were small at first, probably twenty-five or thirty persons the
first Wednesday

night. They blocked the front and rear gates to the compound and
chanted: “Eichmann!

Eichmann!” The crowd grew larger and noisier until April 19 when some persons
began

hurling stones. The stone attacks have persisted since then and most of the
windows in the

church have been shattered. Various church groups have felt the animosity,
especially

missionary groups. The Church of Christ has been the least reticent of all
about its

willingness to convert Jews to Christianity.



On January 10, 1963, seventy Jews, mostly Yeshiva students, attacked the
Finnish

Christian Mission School in Jerusalem, smashed thirty windows and beat Mr.
Risto Santala,

the school pastor. Further up the Street of the Prophets, a car belonging to a
Hebrew-

Christian family was overturned and the plate glass windows of the Zion Mission
shop run

by the Reverend William Hall, were smashed. The Jewish mobs were incited by an
editorial

in the Jewish newspaper Yediot Aharonot of December 23, 1962 which accused the

Christian Mission of converting Jews to Christianity, and calling on Jews to
demonstrate

outside the Finnish School

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