Vatican official urges Israel to halt anti-Christians attacks

A Vatican official in Israel said Monday that "red lines have been crossed" in anti-Christian attacks by Jewish extremists, urging the government to take stringent measures to stem rising wave of hate crimes.

"Red lines have been crossed," Wadiya Abu Nasser, a senior adviser to the Catholic Church in Israel, told Army Radio.

"The attacks are not only on property, but now people too. Christian clerics are spat on in Jerusalem," he said.

Nasser accused Israeli authorities of not taking "any real measures" against the attackers. "I hope that the government and relevant authorities deal with these phenomena in a meaningful way," he added.

Nasser's remarks came a day after the Vatican City's Custody of the Holy Land sent a letter to Israel's Attorney General, demanding him to charge the leader of a the ultra-nationalist group Lehava, Benzi Gopstein, with incitement to torch churches in Israel, according to Ha'aretz newspaper.

The letter was referring to remarks by Gopstein in a conference of yeshiva students in Jerusalem last week. He was asked whether he is in favor of burning churches in Israel, and reportedly answered: "Idol worship must be destroyed. It's simply yes, what's the question?"

On June 29, Israel charged two ultra-right Jewish youths with an arson attack of the Church of Multiplication in the Galilee.

Despite the Israeli announcement on cracking down on "Jewish terrorism," attacks on Muslims, Christians and their holy sites have been of the rise.

According to the Yesh Din human rights group, in the past decade 85 percent of cases of violent acts by Jews against Arab Palestinians were closed as there was insufficient evidence or the police failed to locate the suspects. Furthermore, only 7.4 percent of investigations in that period yielded indictments. Endit