Hundreds join interfaith ‘human rights and peace’ march in Jerusalem

Hundreds of people led by Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Druze religious leaders set out to Jerusalem’s Jaffa Gate as part of an interfaith march for “human rights and peace” this evening.

The march, organized by left-leaning religious organizations for four years now, is meant to counter the nationalist and often violent Flag March that runs through the Old City each Jerusalem Day.

It saw several hundred coexistence activists depart from the Jerusalem YMCA and proceed down King David Street along its sidewalk. Many in the crowd held signs emblazoned with words such as “Justice,” “Peace” and “Soul” in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.

Nuns, an increasingly frequent target of nationalist attacks in Jerusalem, were also seen participating in the march.

Avi Dabush, one of the organizers of the event and a candidate in The Democrats party primaries, calls the march an alternative to last week’s Jerusalem Day revelry, which saw groups of extremist Jewish youth harass and attack Arab residents of the Old City.

“Jerusalem Day should be a celebration of this city in all its richness and of everyone who calls it home, not a day of pushing others out,” he says. “Violence and racism toward members of other faiths are a disgrace, and doubly so from within our own Jewish moral tradition, which teaches that every human being was created in God’s image.”

Upon reaching Jaffa Gate, marchers were led in prayer at separate points by a rabbi, a priest, and a Muslim social activist. They were then serenaded by Israel’s 2009 Eurovision contender Achinoam Nini, who performed her entry, “There Must Be Another Way.”

Sheikh Younes Amasha, a Druze clergyman who heads the Forum of Religious Leaders in Israel, called on marchers to “raise the cry of the minorities in Syria” during the main event, in particular the Druze, “who have experienced massacres, kidnappings, and severe harm to innocent people… at the hands of extremist organizations.”