Rampaging Israeli youths burn Christian New Testaments*

JERUSALEM (AP) — Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New
Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries
in the Holy Land.

Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a
neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central
Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material.

After receiving complaints, Aharon said, he got into a loudspeaker car
last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn
over the material to Jewish religious students who went door to door to
collect it.

The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a
synagogue, he said.

The Israeli Maariv daily reported Tuesday that hundreds of Jewish
religious school students took part in the book-burning. But Aharon told
The Associated Press that only a few students were present, and that he
was not there when the books were torched. Not all of the New Testaments
that were collected were burned, but hundreds were, he said.

He said he regretted the burning of the books, but called it a
"commandment" to burn materials that urge Jews to convert.

"I certainly don't denounce the burning of the booklets," he said. "I
denounce those who distributed the booklets."

Jews worship from the Old Testament, including the Five Books of Moses
and the writings of the ancient prophets. Christians revere the Old
Testament as well as the New Testament, which contains the ministry of
Jesus.

Calev Myers, an attorney who represents Messianic Jews, or Jews who
accept Jesus as their savior, demanded in an interview with Army Radio
that all those involved be put on trial. He estimated there were 10,000
Messianic Jews, who are also known as Jews for Jesus, in Israel.

Police had no immediate comment.

Israeli authorities and Orthodox Jews frown on missionary activity aimed
at Jews, though in most cases it is not illegal. Still, the concept of a
Jew burning books is abhorrent to many in Israel because of the
association with Nazis torching piles of Jewish books during the
Holocaust of World War II.

Earlier this year, the teenage son of a prominent Christian missionary
was seriously wounded when a package bomb delivered to the family's West
Bank home went off in his hands.

Last year, arsonists burst into a Jerusalem church used by Messianic
Jews and set the building on fire, raising suspicions that Jewish
extremists were behind the attack. No one claimed responsibility, but
the same church was burned down 25 years ago by ultra-Orthodox Jewish
extremists.