Jordan Times
Sunday, October 24, 2004

A spat in the Old City

By Omar Karmi

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – On Oct. 10, Armenian Archbishop Nourhan Manougian,
second in the Armenian Church hierarchy here, led a procession from the
Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
to mark the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
>From somewhere among the onlookers, a young Yeshiva student suddenly stepped
forward and spat at the bishop. The robed clergyman slapped the man back.
The Jewish student grabbed a chain, with an ancient religious pendant, from
around the bishop’s neck, tore it off and broke it. By this time, the entire
Armenian procession had piled in, and the Yeshiva student escaped relatively
unscathed only after the intervention of the Israeli police.

If it hadn’t happened, you couldn’t have made it up. But this was just
another day in Jerusalem, and not too far out of the ordinary either,
judging by the Oct. 12 headline in the Israeli daily Haaretz, `Christians in
Jerusalem want Jews to stop spitting on them.’

`This is not an unusual incident,’ an Armenian Church official told The
Jordan Times. `We all get it. Last week, a Greek Orthodox priest heard a tap
at his window. When he opened it, someone spat in his face.’

But the Armenians are particularly exposed to such incidents, said the
official, who preferred to remain nameless. Not because of their creed, but
for logistical reasons. `If the Greeks go to the Holy Sepulchre, it’s just
around the corner. It’s the same for the Latins. But the Armenian Quarter is
right next to the Jewish Quarter, and we have much further to go. Hence,
there is more opportunity for spitting.’

What’s with the spitting? The Yeshiva student in question in this incident,
Natan Zvi Rosenthal, said afterwards by way of explanation that he had
always been taught that Christianity was `idol worship.’ Rosenthal’s
explanation comes in various guises. George, a resident of the Armenian
Quarter, said he had once been told that wearing a cross was `a
provocation.’ `One [Jewish] neighbour told me that Christians had persecuted
Jews for 2,000 years, and that’s why some feel it is appropriate to act like
this.’

An Israeli police spokesman on Oct. 19 said this was the first such incident
that the police had dealt with in two-and-a-half years. He conceded,
however, that the incidents are not always brought to the police’s
attention.

Certainly, they are happening with enough frequency for some to question
whether it constitutes an anti-Christian phenomenon. Daniel Rossing, former
adviser to the Israeli religious affairs ministry on Christian affairs and
director of a Jerusalem centre for Christian-Jewish dialogue, told Haaretz
on Oct. 12 that there has been an increase in the number of such incidents
recently, `as part of a general atmosphere of lack of tolerance in the
country.’

The incidents have made many Christian clergy wary and, according to sources
in the Franciscan Church, it has been unofficial policy for Franciscan
clergy to only wear civilian clothes in West Jerusalem for the past 10 years
to avoid any incidents. The Franciscans have also suffered from garbage
being thrown into the garden of their monastery on Mount Zion. There have
been other recent acts of vandalism. A week after the Armenian incident,
Stars of David were spray-painted on the entrance to the Monastery of the
Cross, not far from the Israeli parliament in West Jerusalem.

The Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Cathedral, located near the Israeli police
headquarters in the Russian Compound also in West Jerusalem, has suffered
similar vandalism.

The Armenian Church official also told of several incidents, two in which
the Armenian superior at the Holy Sepulchre Church, Archimandrite Samuel
Aghoyan, had been spat in the face by religious Jews in the Old City.

On Oct. 17, Rosenthal offered an apology to Archbishop Manougian, who in
turn said his religion compelled him to accept it. For the time being,
Rosenthal has been banned from Jerusalem’s Old City for 75 days, and,
according to the Israeli police spokesman, he could still face charges of
assault. The spokesman said he was not aware if there were any other charges
the student could be convicted of, but that a `smart lawyer’ could probably
find some.

Israeli politicians of the left and the right, meanwhile, have come out
strongly against the incident, and the Armenian Church official says he
wouldn’t be surprised if Rosenthal would receive a prison sentence.

`I don’t think the Israeli government, for a number of reasons, can appear
not to be able to protect the holy sites in Jerusalem. It doesn’t look good
for them in any future negotiations over Jerusalem, and it doesn’t look good
to their Christian supporters in the West.’

Sunday, October 24, 2004