{"id":297303,"date":"2024-10-25T07:00:19","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T07:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=297303"},"modified":"2024-10-26T07:26:03","modified_gmt":"2024-10-26T07:26:03","slug":"family-of-christian-israeli-soldier-killed-in-gaza-ordered-to-remove-cross-from-headstone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=297303","title":{"rendered":"Family of Christian Israeli soldier killed in Gaza ordered to remove cross from headstone"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New Arab Staff \u2013 Oct 23, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The family of a Christian<\/a>\u00a0Israeli soldier killed in Gaza has been asked to replace the headstone on his grave because it had a cross on it, Israeli media reported on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

David Bogdanovskyi was killed in December during Israel’s assault<\/a>\u00a0on Gaza and was buried at the Haifa military cemetery,<\/p>\n

His family told Israeli media that they were ordered by the Public Council for Commemoration of Fallen Soldiers in the defence ministry<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0either remove the headstone from the grave or have him reburied outside the cemetery.<\/p>\n

The family said the request had come after complaints by Jewish families who had claimed the cross offended them and affected their ability to pray in the cemetery.<\/p>\n

Bogdanovskyi’s mother said she discovered her son’s headstone was covered after visiting his grave during a ceremony for those killed on 7 October<\/a>, saying she felt humiliated.<\/p>\n

“The cross engraved on his headstone was an integral part of his personal identity and the faith,” she said in a Facebook post.<\/p>\n

The defence ministry said it was legally prohibited to place a cross or any other religious symbol on a military headstone, adding it was “especially important” because Jewish soldiers were also buried in the same cemeteries.<\/p>\n

It also cited the Israeli army’s Chief Rabbi, who said the cross harms the holiness of the Jewish cemetery.<\/p>\n

The soldier’s headstone was covered with a black cloth for several months.<\/p>\n

In Israel, cemeteries are generally separated by religion, but a law passed in 2013 enabled non-Jewish soldiers to be buried with Jewish soldiers in military cemeteries<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bogdanovskyi and several other members of the Israeli army were reportedly killed after an anti-tank missile hit a vehicle they were in Khan Younis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The same month, the Israeli army began advancing into the area, including Jabalia and Shujaiya, pushing civilians to the south of the Gaza Strip, where over 42,000 people – mostly women and children, have been killed.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The family of a Christian IDF soldier killed in Gaza say they have been ordered to remove a cross from his grave following complaints Jewish mourners that it offended them <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-297303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-7-10-gaza-war","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=297303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":297304,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297303\/revisions\/297304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=297303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=297303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=297303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}