Jewish vandals in ‘price tag’ attack on Christian cemetery in Israel

A Christian cemetery has been desecrated in in northern Israel, with graves damaged and crosses smashed, in the latest “price tag” attack by suspected Jewish vandals.

Church officials said that at least 20 gravestones had been smashed at the Maronite Christian cemetery in the derelict village of Kufr Birim near the Lebanese border.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin told church leaders in Jerusalem that the State would crack down on religiously inspired hate crimes. 

There have been hundreds of so-called “price tag” attacks in recent years, often carried out by West Bank Jewish settlers and their supporters against Christian and Muslim targets.

In February, a Greek Orthodox seminary for the study of Christianity next to the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem was partly destroyed, with graffiti scrawled on the walls, reading: “Jesus was a son of a b*tch” and “Redemption of Zion.”