Holy Land: Arson attack on Jerusalem seminary

Jerusalem today

In the early hours today, Thursday 26 February, an arson attack damaged the Greek-Orthodox Patriarchate's Theological Seminary of Jerusalem, not far from the Old Town. The fire devastated a hall of the seminar and some annexes. The unknown attackers also wrote blasphemous sentences against Christ on the walls, in Hebrew. No one was injured.

The attack was immediately condemned in a statement by the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land.

The way in which the attack was carried out and the writings on the walls suggest that the attack against the Greek-Orthodox Seminary was another in the long series of desecration and intimidation committed by groups of extremist Jewish settlers against Christian monasteries, churches and cemeteries starting from February 2012.

On Monday, Jewish extremists burned a mosque in the city of Jabaa, southwest of Bethlehem.

Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said in a statement today that the fires at the Jerusalem seminary and the mosque near Bethlehem were the work of "Israeli terrorists ... protected by a government that claims exclusivity over this land."

Ahmed Tibi, a Palestinian legislator in the Israeli Knesset, described the attacks as “terrorism in all respects” and denounced the Israeli justice system for not doing more to curb such assaults, Haaretz reported.

"If you can kill a Palestinian or cut down an olive tree without penalty," Tibi added, "then you can burn mosques and churches without fear."

A total of 329 incidents of settler-related violence targeting Palestinians in the West Bank were reported in 2014, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Source: Fides/Haaretz