Israeli authorities have closed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and are banning Christians from celebrating Easter, claims far-right MEP Diana Şoşoacă.
NEWS: Israel has closed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre indefinitely for the first time in the history of Christianity. Holy Week and Easter services will be banned. Sunday services and liturgies have been canceled. A church that should be filled with hundreds of thousands in the coming weeks has been forcibly closed and silenced. Vatican officials, alongside their Eastern counterparts, are struggling to petition Israeli authorities for reopening. Israel cites “security concerns,” which the Vatican has called an excuse to silence Christians, while Israeli Jews are allowed to celebrate in mass gatherings. Along with the forced closure of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, reports indicate that priests are being aggressively barred from conducting daily services. According to Vatican News, the large double gate that has protected the entrance to the Holy Sepulchre for centuries has never remained closed for such an extended period of time. Throughout history, wars, tensions, or even pandemics have limited access to the sanctuary, but have never indefinitely prevented liturgical celebrations in this central place of the Christian faith. Christians must not remain silent."
I told you that this is a religious war and they want to eradicate Christianity.
NARRATIVE: Israel bans Christian services and liturgies with the aim of permanently “eradicating” Christianity.
PURPOSE: To promote conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic rhetoric, and to provoke and amplify social tensions.
Due to the war, Israeli authorities have blocked access for ALL believers—Christians, Muslims, and Jews—to their holy sites in Jerusalem
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: In the classic style of propaganda of any kind, which starts with a truth taken out of context, Diana Şoşoacă fails to mention that in addition to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Israeli authorities have closed all holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City, including Jewish ones, such as the Western Wall. In fact, Israel’s High Court of Justice has repeatedly rejected petitions by Jewish worshippers to be allowed to perform Passover rituals on the Temple Mount, citing security threats and an escalation of religious tensions, and the Israeli police have also prevented several groups of Jews from carrying out such practices. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the restrictions were imposed “for one reason only: to protect worshippers”, and the same security measures apply to all three major religious denominations. Jerusalem police explained that an area such as the Temple Mount complex lacks bomb shelters capable of withstanding a ballistic missile attack, especially given that tens of thousands of worshippers would be present.
Furthermore, the three holy sites are closed to the masses of the faithful, not to the clergy, who—despite the false claim that “Holy Week and Easter services will be banned. Sunday services and liturgies have been cancelled”—continue to conduct services inside them. “The Church of the Holy Sepulchre remains a place of continuous prayer, despite restricted access for the faithful,” the Vatican announced on March 21, noting at the same time that “regarding the public organization of Holy Week celebrations, the Brothers of the Custody of the Holy Land explain that at this time they ‘cannot make predictions.’” These statements clearly show that the reports claiming that “priests are aggressively prevented from performing daily services” do not exist, as detailed and repeated searches have revealed absolutely no credible information to support this claim. Similarly, the “official” statement from the Vatican allegedly claiming that Israel seeks to “silence Christians” could not be identified in the news cycle; this is most likely the product of Diana Şoşoacă’s imagination and her excessive zeal to justify her lies. Furthermore, the Vatican has explained that, at this time, it is in “constant” dialogue with the relevant Israeli authorities and with other churches responsible for the Holy Sepulchre, to decide how the Easter celebrations in Jerusalem will take place.
The claim that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre “has never been closed for such a continuous period of time” is false; the most recent instance of this occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the site was closed to the public for two months, from March 25, 2020, to May 24, 2020, on the orders of Israeli health officials. However, even then, Christian clergy continued their prayers inside the building, just as they do today. Furthermore, even a minimal amount of historical research would have revealed to Diana Şoşoacă that during the bubonic plague epidemic of 1349, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was also completely closed to the faithful for several months.
The war in the Middle East is NOT a religious one
Continuing her solitary crusade, Diana Şoşoacă also claims that the current war launched by Israel (a Jewish state) and the U.S. (a predominantly Christian state) against Iran (a Muslim state) is a “religious” one directed against Christianity. Unfortunately, we will have to ignore the fact that the vast majority of the victims of this conflict are of any religious orientation except Christian, and we will focus on its causes. Although many voices emphasize the religious aspect of the war, using terms like “holy war” or “clash of civilizations,” the reality is that it is primarily a geopolitical and strategic conflict. The main actors in the conflict are motivated by considerations of security, regional influence, and control over resources. Both the U.S. and Israel accuse Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program, supporting paramilitary groups in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, and controlling energy routes in the Persian Gulf region—issues that pertain strictly to strategy, power, and security, not religious doctrine.
It is true that religion plays a visible role in the conflict, but it is merely a tool used in appeals to mobilize the population, not the per se cause of the conflict. Even if we venture into the realm of the absurd and accept that the war is a religious one, it has nothing to do with Christianity, but rather with the ideological conflict between Islam and Judaism. It is ridiculous, in fact, to believe that Israel decided to attack Iran, an Islamic republic, in order to close Christian churches on its territory. In fact, the use of this religious rhetoric only serves to amplify interfaith tensions and fuel anti-Semitic stereotypes, which Diana Şoşoacă is no stranger to promoting.
Diana Şoşoacă, a prominent figure in Romania’s anti-Semitic discourse
CONTEXT: Anti-Semitism in Romania is on the rise, fuelled on the one hand by the recent conflicts in the Middle East involving Israel, and on the other by the recent adoption of the law on combating extremism, which a large part of the “sovereignist” spectrum identifies as a threat to freedom of expression and a political tool of intimidation and threat against the Christian national identity. The narrative promoted by Diana Şoşoacă, however, also aligns with the ultra-conservative current that claims the Orthodox Church in particular and Christianity in general are facing a “global” (but also national) “assault” by the global cabal, led primarily by Jews. In Romania, a country that remains deeply religious and conservative, marked over time by tendencies toward extremism, recent years have seen a veritable flood of fake news on these topics, much of it originating in Moscow. One of the main narratives of the propaganda war waged by Moscow against the EU and NATO asserts that the West is “morally decayed and has strayed from Christian values,” a space in stark contrast to that of traditional, Christian, Orthodox values, which Russia allegedly represents. Within this framework, almost any event, no matter how insignificant, can be linked to the “persecution of Christians” through ambiguous and allusive phrasing or omissions of information.
Named the “Political Figure of the Year 2021” by the Kremlin’s mouthpiece, Sputnik, Diana Șoșoacă has made a name for herself over the years through various scandals in which she has been implicated, as well as by promoting claims, false narratives, and disinformation very similar to those disseminated by Russia. In her speeches, she also promotes sovereignist and anti-European theses, while her political activity boils down to taking positions with discriminatory, homophobic, and anti-Semitic undertones, legislative initiatives that flagrantly contravene international law, as well as parliamentary questions that border on the ridiculous. For example, in August 2025, she called on Romanian authorities to sever diplomatic ties with Israel, after previously promoting a false narrative claiming that Chinese planes had broken the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Furthermore, in December 2023, shortly after the outbreak of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, Diana Şoşoacă claimed that the Romanian Parliament had secretly approved the abandonment of the country’s neutrality in favour of the Jewish state, which it was to support in its offensive in Gaza.
Diana Șoșoacă is currently under investigation in Romania for committing 11 offenses, including unlawful detention, assault, publicly promoting Legionary ideas and doctrines, promoting anti-Semitism, denying or minimizing the Holocaust, glorifying war criminals, and other violent crimes. For this reason, the MEP was heard by the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee last week regarding the lifting of her parliamentary immunity, at the request of the General Prosecutor’s Office. A decision on this matter, followed by a possible vote in the plenary session of the European Parliament, would most likely take place next month.
GRAIN OF TRUTH: On March 29, nearly two weeks after Diana Șoșoacă spread the false narrative, Israeli police did indeed prevent the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to celebrate the Catholic Palm Sunday liturgy, “out of special concern for his safety”. A few hours later, however, the Israeli Prime Minister’s office clarified that, “in light of Holy Week beginning for Christians around the world, security forces are developing a plan to allow Catholic clergy to pray at the holy sites in the coming days.”
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