Clergy, advocates say verbal abuse and spitting grow in Old City
A Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court judge on Wednesday acquitted a man accused of attacking a Catholic nun, ruling he was entitled to an insanity defense and ordering him committed to psychiatric hospitalization for up to six years.
The April assault on the nun, who was walking in her habit in Jerusalem’s Old City, was seen as a rare and worrisome escalation, the Associated Press reported, in an environment that people of all faiths have been experiencing through nearly three years of war.
The judge ruled there was evidence the defendant, a Jewish man from a settlement in the occupied West Bank, committed the actions he was charged with. The district psychiatrist found the man was psychotic at the time of the attack, according to the AP, which entitled him to the insanity defense.
In the Old City, clergy and advocates say verbal abuse and spitting have grown increasingly common in the densely packed historic heart of Jerusalem, where Christians, Jews and Muslims daily cross paths, mostly uneventfully, as they visit some of the holiest sites of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The commitment order places the man under psychiatric care for up to six years rather than a prison sentence.