Christmas trees passed out at Old City's Yafo Gtae
Christmas trees passed out at Old City's Yafo GtaeYonatan Sindel/Flash 90

Jerusalem Councilman Arieh King exposed surprising tidings on Monday night, revealing that the capital's Municipality last Monday passed out 100 Christmas trees for free at the Old City's Yafo Gate, in a move supporting Christianity in the 3,000-year-old Jewish capital.

The official announcement from the Municipality's website which King attached in a Facebook post read that the trees were to be handed out to Christian residents of the Old City who presented an ID card.

"Do you remember when the Municipality passed out hanukkiyot (holiday candelabra for Hanukkah) for the Jewish residents of the city?" asked King. "Do you remember when the Municipality handed out the four species (used for Sukkot) to residents of the city?"

King continued "it's not clear how my colleagues on the Municipal Council from the hareidi parties gave a hand in passing out avoda zara (foreign non-Jewish worship) by Municipal workers."

"Remember all the rabbis who supported Mayor (Nir) Barkat in the mayoral elections? I wish the rabbis who supported Barkat a merry Christmas," concluded King sarcastically.

King has previously criticized Barkat for advancing massive Arab construction projects, which he argued together with a freeze of Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is poised to lead to a de facto division of the city.

As part of that process, he noted that Netanyahu has not been sending police to accompany building inspectors to enforce building laws on Arab construction - there are 40,000 illegal Arab housing units in the city. Likewise, he revealed there are eight neighborhoods in Jerusalem that are "judenrein," or "clean from Jews," with entry for Jews forbidden by Netanyahu's government since he came to power in 2009.