Church Of The Holy Sepulchre Closes To Protest Israeli Policies
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem locked its doors and closed until further notice to protest a new municipal tax policy and a bill that would allow the Israeli government to confiscate some church land in exchange for compensation.
“We, the heads of Churches in charge of the Holy Sepulchre and the Status Quo governing the various Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem […] are following with great concern the systematic campaign against the Churches and the Christian community in the Holy Land, in flagrant violation of the existing Status Quo,” read a statement from the heads of the churches in Israel: Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III, Custos Francesco Patton and Armenian Patriarch Nourhan Manougian, Haaretz reported.
“This systematic and offensive campaign has reached and unprecedented level as the Jerusalem municipality issued scandalous collection notices and orders of seizure of Church assets, properties and bank accounts for alleged debts of punitive municipal taxes.”
The statement compared the decisions to “the laws of a similar nature which were enacted against the Jews during dark periods in Europe.”
The church, where Jesus is believed to have been crucified, buried and resurrected, is one of Christianity’s holiest sites.
Following the closing of the church, a Knesset committee on Sunday postponed discussion of the church lands bill, which would halt most of the major land sales in tony neighborhoods of Jerusalem carried out by the churches to private real estate companies.
Meanwhile, the Jerusalem municipality said it would collect about $186 million in what it said are back taxes owed by churches and international bodies with property in the city, according to Haaretz.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO