URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/12/jerusalem-and-jews-under-attack/
This week on FP Raymond Ibrahim published a short but powerful report on a Tunisian church coming under threats and abuse from Islamists. “Church members,” Ibrahim notes,
are described [in Al Quds] as “living in a state of terror…. Salafis covered the cross of the church with garbage bags, telling the church members that they do not wish to see the vision of the Cross anywhere in the Islamic state of Tunisia.”
Ibrahim also points out that Tunisia has long been considered one of the most “secular” and “liberal” Arab countries—while now “its very few churches are not tolerated, and their crucifixes abhorred…. More evidence of the true nature of the ‘Arab Spring.’”
But it is not only minority groups in the region, like Christians in Tunisia and elsewhere, who suffer from this sort of abuse, and by no means only Salafi elements who perpetrate it. Jews are a majority in Israel, and they grant full citizenship to non-Jews in the country including those in East Jerusalem (who mostly decline it). But it doesn’t necessarily help.
A recent Jerusalem Post editorial lamented a difficult situation on the Mount of Olives—the mountain ridge in East Jerusalem that has served as a Jewish cemetery for over three thousand years. In an incident late last month,
a young bridegroom wished to say a short prayer at his mother’s grave on [the] Mount of Olives…. He was driven up by his friend Dror Klein.
As they neared their destination, a bucket of white paint crashed into the front windshield, obscuring Dror’s view. A hail of stones followed.
In minutes some 30 to 40 young Arabs surrounded the vehicle, rocking it menacingly and hurling large rocks, cement blocks and broken pavement fragments at the two.
The bridegroom was dragged out of the car, a boulder was smashed on his head and he was beaten up to the sounds of Alahu Akhbar (God is great). Dror somehow managed to maneuver his Hyundai directly at the attackers. As they momentarily scurried, the bridegroom and his resourceful driver got away by the skin of their teeth.
The two—who felt that they were threatened with death and started reciting a Jewish prayer for that situation—got out with what the police defined as “light injuries.”
But as the editorial notes, the incident was by no means unusual: