Armenian archbishop quizzed over spat with yeshiva student
By Amiram Barkat

Haaretz
Mon., October 11, 2004 Tishrei 26, 5765 Israel Time: 01:20 (GMT+2)

The Armenian archbishop in Israel, Nourhan Manougian, was questioned
under warning by police yesterday after he slapped a yeshiva student
during a procession marking the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in
Jerusalem’s Old City. The archbishop slapped the student after the
latter spat at the cross the Armenians were carrying and at Manougian
himself.

The incident developed into a brawl during which Manougian’s ceremonial
medallion, which has been used by Armenian archbishops since the 17th
century, broke.

The yeshiva student was also detained for questioning.

Police are now considering whether to initiate criminal
proceedings against the Armenian archbishop and to charge him with
assault. Meanwhile, the incident has sparked much anger among the
clergy of the small Armenian community in Jerusalem.

Religious Jews, among them yeshiva students, customarily spit on the
ground as a sign of disgust on seeing the cross. The Armenians, who
live adjacent to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, suffer from this
phenomenon more than any of the other Christian sects in the Old City.

Manougian says he and his colleagues have already learned to live with
it. “I no longer get worked up by people who turn around and spit
when I pass them by in the street; but to approach in the middle of
a religious procession and to spit on the cross in front of all the
priests of the sect is humiliation that we are not prepared to accept,”
he notes.

A policeman is customarily posted to guard the Armenians’ religious
processions, but doesn’t generally do anything to prevent the
spitting. The Armenians took the matter up with Interior Minister
Avraham Poraz some seven months ago, but nothing has been done about
till now.

“The Israeli government is anti-Christian,” Manougian charges. “It
cries out in the face of any harm done to Jews all over the world,
but is simply not interested at all when we are humiliated on an
almost daily basis.”

Lawmaker Rabbi Michael Melchior (Labor Party) says the phenomenon
should be tackled through educational means. “I would expect prominent
figures among the religious and ultra-Orthodox sectors, such as the
chief rabbis, to denounce this phenomenon,” he says.