Israeli Press
A Jerusalem-born historian says extremists attack the Armenian Quarter unpunished
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
Six ultra-nationalist religious Jews spat on the entrance of the Cathedral of St. James in Jerusalem's Armenian Quarter and threw stones at Armenian homes, Bedross Der Matossian wrote in an opinion piece published Friday by the Jerusalem Post.
Der Matossian is a professor of modern Middle East history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a Guggenheim Fellow, and he was born and raised in the Old City he is writing about.
That incident, in his account, is not an aberration but the routine of decades: harassment, intimidation and discrimination directed at one of the oldest communities inside the walls, and met with what he describes as official indifference.
He asks the Israeli government and police to enforce the laws already on the books, and to consider heavier ones — criminal penalties including imprisonment in serious cases, and compensation for those attacked. He calls on the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other bodies to investigate and monitor, and on news organisations to give the attacks the coverage they would receive in any Western city.
The Armenian Quarter is one of the four quarters of the walled Old City in occupied East Jerusalem, and its community has lived there for some sixteen centuries. Its residents are Palestinian Armenians — a Christian minority whose position sits inside, not outside, the pressure on Palestinian Jerusalem.
An Israeli newspaper carried the argument. Whether an Israeli police file follows is the test Der Matossian set.
