30 Graves Vandalized in Jerusalem’s Mount Zion Protestant Cemetery

Church officials of the Episcopal diocese in Jerusalem discovered Wednesday morning that more than 30 graves in the Protestant Cemetery on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion had been desecrated, with gravestones toppled and vandalized. Jerusalem’s Anglican Archbishop Hosam Naoum referred to the incident as a “clear hate crime,” while the British Consulate said it was just the latest in a series of attacks on the holy city’s Christian community. The Israeli Foreign Ministry condemned the attack as an “immoral act” and “an affront to religion.” Israeli police are investigating the cemetery profanation. A security camera recorded the entry into the cemetery Sunday morning of two unknown men or boys, dressed as religious Jews, who then proceeded to topple stone crosses and smash tombstones. The tomb of Samuel Gobat, the city’s second Protestant bishop, who died in 1879, and the graves of three British police officers who served on the force during the British Mandate, were among the vandalized graves.