by Miko Peled
“Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon denounced a conference organized by the Israeli Open University to discuss the increasing violence on Christians and Christian sites in Palestine. These attacks, carried out mostly by Anti-Chrisitan Zionist hate groups, have increased at an alarming pace. Close to twenty incidents were registered between the end of 2022 and June of 2023.
High-level clergy in Jerusalem have blamed, at least in part, the far-right government, which includes ultranationalist ministers, for the growing wave of attacks. Nikodemus Schnabel, who presides over the Benedictine Abbey of the Dormition in Jerusalem, told the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung that attacks against Christians have increased because “those who hate Christians now sit in the government.” He was right.
The conference, sponsored and organized by the Center for the Study of Relations Between Jews, Christians and Muslims at the Open University of Israel and carrying the bizarre name, “Why do (some) Jews spit on Goyim,” was held in June 2023 in Jerusalem. The conference was supposed to take place at the King David Tower museum, but due to pressure from the Mayor’s office and the harsh criticism by Israel’s Chief Rabbi, Shlomo Amram, it had to be moved to another location.
The King David Tower museum sits in the citadel at the Old City of Jerusalem entrance, overlooking Jaffa Gate. The tower and the museum have nothing to do with King David, but the name and the museum are part of the Zionist propaganda machine that desperately tries to give historical legitimacy to the existence of the settler colonial project known as Israel.“