May 24 1999

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T hree firebomb attacks within two weeks in March highlighted growing pressure on the Christian and Messianic Jewish communities in Israel.

On March 7, Mikhail and Tirtze Shvaneberg's parked car was firebombed outside their home in Moshava Migdal, a community of 2,500 near the Sea of Galilee. The Shvanebergs and their eight children are members of the Peniel Messianic Jewish congregation in Tiberias.

Flames spread to the home's balcony in the 3:30 a.m. fire. The eldest daughter, Hadassah, heard windows breaking. "I called everyone and we extinguished the fire. It's a miracle from God that the house didn't burn down."

The Shvanebergs had been threatened in the past for openly sharing their faith that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

Eight days after the car fire, two Molotov cocktails were thrown into the Baptist Book Shop in west Jerusalem, also during early morning, causing several thousand dollars' worth of damage.

Six days later, Joseph Shulam, an early Israeli Messianic leader and head of the Netivyah Bible Instruction Min is try, was awakened in his Jerusalem home at 3:45 a.m. by a Molotov cocktail. "I opened the window and took the burning bottle to the sink and drowned it in a pot full of water," Shulam says.

Israeli police have made no arrests in connection with the three attacks, but they did apprehend three ultraorthodox Jews after an assault last November. Hundreds of black-garbed Jews in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem ransacked and burned the contents of an apartment occupied by three Swiss Christian women accused of "missionary activity." In February, a court sentenced 28-year-old Yehoshua Weiss to eight months in prison for his part in the attack.

ORGANIZED CAMPAIGN? In Beersheva, however, religious institutions ...