Three Arab youths, one age 12, have been apprehended by the Jerusalem police in connection with the violent destruction 10 days ago of scores of gravestones on the Mount of Olives cemetery.
The police also announced Monday that they had arrested two young men in connection with the torching over the weekend of nine cars in a garage in the Atarot industrial zone north of Jerusalem, and another two on Mount Zion.
The torchings were the climax of a crime epidemic that has left scores of Jewish-owned cars in the capital smoldering wrecks.
The burnings usually occur along the “seam,” the line that divided Israeli and Jordanian sections of Jerusalem before 1967.
The three youths allegedly involved in the grave desecrations come from the village of Ras al-Amud, which abuts the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.
Police said they were equipped with hammers and spent over an hour on the night of June 10 smashing 77 gravestones — many of them into little fragments. All the damage was sustained in the section of the cemetery run by the Kollel Polin Burial Society.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
