October 19, 2004
by Michele Green
Ecumenical News International

JERUSALEM - 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 Oct. 10 incident, 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 an Oct. 12 editorial: "It is intolerable that Christian citizens of Jerusalem suffer from the shameful spitting at or near a crucifix. Similar behavior toward Jews anywhere in the world would immediately prompt vehement responses."

Presbyterian News Service