Ecumenical News International
Daily News Service
14 October 2004

Spitting triggers Jewish-Christian tension in Jerusalem’s Old City
ENI-04-0681

By Michele Green

Jerusalem, 14 October (ENI)–Tensions in Jerusalem’s Old City
have flared following an incident in which a Jewish seminary
student spat at an archbishop during a procession from the city’s
Armenian Quarter to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a site
commemorating Jesus’ crucifixion and burial.

Israeli police arrested the seminary student, but Christian
clerics living in the walled Old City say such assaults by
ultra-Orthodox Jews is a frequent occurrence.

“It happens maybe once a week,” Armenian Bishop Aris Shirvanian
told Ecumenical News International. “As soon as they notice a
Christian clergyman they spit. Those who are ‘respectful’ turn
their backs to us or the large cross that we may carry but the
ones that are daring either spit on the ground or on the person
without any provocation on our part.”

In the incident on Sunday, a cross was ripped from the
archbishop’s neck when a scuffle broke out after the Jewish
seminary student spat at the cleric. The seminary student later
told police he had done it because he saw the religious
procession as idolatry. Police said the man had been temporarily
banned from visiting the Old City and that he had been placed on
bail pending an indictment.

Bishop Shirvanian said spitting against Christian clergyman had
been going on for years and that the assailants were religious
Jews, sometimes men but also women, teenagers and even children.
“This shows that it is a phenomenon that is prevailing in their
religious education and it should be corrected,” he said.

Daniel Rossing, director of the Jerusalem Center for
Jewish-Christian relations, said his organization was collating
accounts of spitting incidents so they could approach rabbis and
demand they teach their congregants to stop such attacks.

“All people are created in the image of God and to spit on
another person is to spit on the image of God,” Rossing said. He
said that usually the assailants were ultra-Orthodox Jews and the
victims were “people wearing liturgical vestments or are wearing
a manifest Christian symbol such as a cross”. Rossing said he
believed the attacks were carried out due to intolerance towards
Christians by ultra-Orthodox Jews as well as to anger from
religious persecution in past centuries.

Israeli police spokesman Gil Kleiman said few Christians file
complaints with police about such assaults and unless they did it
was impossible to arrest and prosecute the assailants.

“We can only act when we have been informed by a complainant.
When we do know about it we act immediately to arrest the person
who did it and bring them to justice,” Kleiman said.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz said in a 12 October editorial: “It
is intolerable that Christian citizens of Jerusalem suffer from
the shameful spitting at or near a crucifix. Similar behaviour
toward Jews anywhere in the world would immediately prompt
vehement responses.” [482 words]

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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress