On Palm Sunday, Israeli volunteers escort Christian processions to report racist incidents
Volunteers from the Religious Freedom Data Center accompany Armenian, Latin, clerics to and from Church of Holy Sepulchre during their annual holy week ritual
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
The cobbled streets of Jerusalem’s Old City have vibrated for centuries from the stamping of maces held by the festooned “guards,” or kavasses, of the Latin, Greek, and Armenian patriarchates as they make their way to and from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
On Palm Sunday, which marks the beginning of Holy Week leading up to Easter, the Armenian procession took place as usual this year. The kavasses, wearing fez hats and ceremonial scimitars — a throwback to their origin in Ottoman times — took the lead, with clerics in black hooded cassocks following behind.
But this year, the march had two modern additions — a police officer in front and another behind, and a group of Israeli volunteers wearing yellow- and lime-colored vests, with cellphones ready to document any untoward incidents along the way.
There was one.
Immediately after leaving the patriarchate, Yisca Harani, who set up the Religious Freedom Data Center three years ago to document, report, and submit complaints on racist attacks on Christian communities, spotted a religious Jewish youth spitting in the direction of a cleric.
She rushed to a group of four youths and recorded a conversation (in Hebrew) in which she asked why one of them spat.
“I’ve got phlegm,” he said. Another added, “Because they’re Christians.” She explained that spitting was against the law, after which one said, “Wait until we come and burn you all.”
Harani immediately called the police, and within minutes, officers had detained the youths at a station close to the nearby Tower of David.
A police spokesman later told The Times of Israel that the two were questioned and released, but the incident was under “active investigation.”
The Armenian procession continued without further reported incident into the cavernous interior of the church, which is believed by Christians to contain the sites of the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. There, their voices rose in a cacophonous celebration of recitation and song from multiple denominations.
Devotees of the Syriac community bowed as their priests, wearing shimmering gold braid, uttered prayers in one corner.
At the same time, Orthodox Christians, many apparently from the former Soviet Union, lined a large hall crowned by ornate chandeliers.
From beneath stone arches came the choral renditions of the Catholic clerics decked out in red. Believers formed a line to receive Holy Communion.
Some visitors held olive branches, others fronds of palm. Many had braided palms on their heads, commemorating the palm branches the crowds waved when Jesus entered Jerusalem.
The vested volunteers waited to escort the Catholics back to the Latin Patriarchate, this time without incident.
Christians make up less than 2% of Israelis
According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, some 180,300 Christians live in Israel, representing around 1.8% of the Israeli population. Nearly 80% of them are Arab.
Harani, an expert on Christianity who works extensively with tour guides, established the entirely voluntary Religious Freedom Data Center three years ago, after a post-pandemic upswing in Christian tourism to Israel and a corresponding increase in abusive behavior by some religious Jews.
The center has a pool of around 70 volunteers, some of whom accompanied Sunday’s processions.
The center also provides a hotline through which Christians can report incidents, and it issues reports.
During the first quarter of this year, the center detailed 44 harassment events, of which 26 involved spitting, six were connected to verbal abuse, and five involved vandalism. Over a third (36%) of the cases inside the Old City were in the Armenian Quarter, which provides a popular and quiet through route between the Old City’s Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall and Mount Zion.
“Those 44 incidents were just what we documented,” Harani explained. “I submit complaints. In 99% of cases, they are closed.”
Harani works with the Jewish People’s Policy Institute and Window on Zion, an initiative of the Jerusalem Intercultural Center that also supplies volunteers for Armenian Patriarchate processions. Last year, she began partnering with the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue on data collection, supplying much information for its recent report on Christian communities. Starting this year, she is harnessing the legal department of the Reform Center for Religion and State (IRAC) to help follow up on cases.
“If we are not active, nobody knows [about these incidents]. The Christians don’t report [them], they’re so exhausted,” Harani said, adding that to spot the abuse, one often needed “a trained hunter’s eye.”
“We are their only hope for order. This degenerate might get four hours in the Old City police station, and another, an order to stay away from the Old City for 15 days. Hopefully, now that we have a lawyer, they will also be charged,” she said.
As The Times of Israel’s Lazar Berman explained on a recent podcast, those who want to justify insulting Christians — often youth on the fringes of religious society — cite Jewish sources that encourage spitting against idol-worshipers, which they extend to Christians. But, added Berman, rather than justifying this kind of behavior, there was plenty of textual evidence showing it violated a range of Jewish religious laws.
The Israel Police said it had detained or arrested “numerous suspects” in Jerusalem over the past year in connection with offenses against Christians and viewed “any form of violence, hate crimes, vandalism, or acts of bullying with the utmost seriousness. ”
It said it “unequivocally condemns the disgraceful behavior of any individual… who harms or attempts to harm Christians or any other person. The safety and security of the Christian communities in Jerusalem is a commitment we uphold with the highest priority.”
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