Epress.am News from Armenia
When Canadian-Armenian Narek Garabedian came to Israel to study in the Armenian Seminary in Jerusalem half a year ago, he did not expect the insults, curses and spitting he would be subjected to daily by ultra-Orthodox Jews in the streets of the Old City.
“When I see an ultra-Orthodox man coming toward me in the street, I always ask myself if he will spit at me,” said Narek this week. About a month ago, on his way to buy groceries in the Old City, two ultra-Orthodox men spat at him. The spittle did not fall at his feet but on his person. Narek, a former football player, decided this time not to turn the other cheek.
“I was very angry. I pushed them both to the wall and asked, ‘Why are you doing this?’ They were frightened and said ‘We’re sorry, we’re sorry,’ so I let them go. But it isn’t always like that. Sometimes the spitter attacks you back,” he says, reports Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz newspaper in Israel.
According to the website, ultra-Orthodox young men curse and spit at Christian clergymen in the streets of Jerusalem’s Old City as a matter of routine.
Other clergymen in the Armenian Church in Jerusalem say they are all victims of harassment, from the senior cardinals to the priesthood students. Mostly they ignore these incidents. When they do complain, the police don’t usually find the perpetrators.
Father Goosan Aljanian, Chief Dragoman of the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem, says it is often difficult for temperamental young priesthood students to swallow the offense.
About a month ago two students marching to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre beat up an ultra-Orthodox man who spat at them. They were sent away from the Old City for two weeks.
“I tell my students that if they are spat at, to go to the police rather than strike back,” says Goosan. “But these are young kids who sometimes lose their cool.”
A few weeks ago four ultra-Orthodox men spat at clergymen in the funeral procession of Father Alberto of the Armenian Church. “They came in a pack, out of nowhere,” said Father Goosan. “I know there are fanatical Haredi groups that don’t represent the general public but it’s still enraging. It all begins with education. It’s the responsibility of these men’s yeshiva heads to teach them not to behave this way,” he says.
Father Goosan and other Patriarchy members are trying to walk as little as possible in the Old City streets. “Once we walked from the [Armenian] church to the Jaffa Gate and on that short section four different people spat at us,” he says.