The phenomenon is already beginning to be studied and has repercussions abroad. An Israeli journalist wanted to verify the fact and walked through the streets dressed in a Franciscan habit. He was shocked.
Newsroom (06/25/2023 20:51, Gaudium Press) Following a significant increase in cases of harassment of Christian clerics in Jerusalem, with Jews spitting on Christians, Yonatan Moss, introduced last Friday’s report with the provocative title, “Why do certain Jews spit on Gentiles?” Moss is a professor of religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his participation in the report shows the proportion that the phenomenon has reached.
Recordings of this fact are already regularly circulating on social media.
In recent days, journalist Yossi Eli, a correspondent for the Israeli News 13 channel for Jerusalem affairs, police, fire, and rescue services, came up with the idea of taking to the streets dressed in a Franciscan habit.
“Humiliations, spitting, and beatings. For the past six months, Christianity in Israel is under attack. More and more hate crimes against Christian clergy and Christian symbols. After a large number of these cases, we decided to order a Franciscan friar habit and went out with friars from the Vatican to check the streets of the old city,” Eli wrote on his Twitter account. “The results were surprising. Some didn’t stop spitting at us and belittling us.”
השפלות, יריקות ומכות. בחצי שנה האחרונה הנצרות בארץ תחת מתקפה. יותר ויותר פשעי שנאה כלפי אנשי דת נוצרים וסממנים נוצרים. בעקבות כמות גדולה של מקרים כאלו, החלטנו לבקש גלימת כומר פרנציסקני ויצאנו עם כמרים מהותיקן לבדיקה ברחובות העיר העתיקה. התוצאות מטןרפות. לא הפסיקו לירוק עלינו… pic.twitter.com/i0KVevHIkw
– Yossi Eli יוסי אלי (@Yossi_eli) June 22, 2023
Spitting does not discriminate against gender, and it is common to see Jews spitting on the feet of religious women. Its perpetrators are not exclusively ultra-Orthodox Jews, but also from other streams. Sometimes it is not just spitting, but verbal and physical aggression. Nor are religious people exclusively targeted, but also pilgrims and Christian buildings.
This issue, which has intensified in the last six months, is already a concern outside Israel. For example, it merited a few days ago a story by Le Figaro’s correspondent in the Holy Land, entitled “In Jerusalem, Christians victims of spitting by Orthodox Jews.”
In short, it is clear that what happens in Israel and specifically in Jerusalem has rapid repercussions around the world, this city being commonly a small mirror of world tensions, and one of the most sacred sites not only for Jews but for the three great monotheistic religions.
Compiled by Dominic Joseph
