JEW SPITS AT GREEK PRIESTS IN JERUSALEM
By Etgar Lefkovits
Jerusalem Post
Sept 5 2005
A young religious Jew spat at a procession of Greek Orthodox priests
in the Old City of Jerusalem on Monday, police said, in the third
such incident in the mixed city in the last year.
The skullcap-wearing assailant, Amitai Shashar, 20, told police that he
spat at the procession near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher because
he saw the cross that participants in the ceremony were carrying,
Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.
The attacker, an Old City resident, was taken into custody by police
officers who were escorting the religious procession.
A Greek Orthodox Church spokesman said that the Jewish extremist
had spat in the face of the head of ceremonies, after getting into
a heated verbal altercation with the priests at the procession.
Church officials declined to lodge a complaint with police, the church
spokesman said.
The assailant was later released on NIS 2,500 bail by a Jerusalem
court, and ordered to stay out of the Old City for the next thirty
days, except to go to and from his Old City home.
The incident was the third such assault in the Old City in the
last year.
Earlier this year, an Armenian priest was attacked by four yeshiva
students in the Old City of Jerusalem, an altercation that began when
one of the yeshiva students spat on the black-robed priest in front
of the Armenian Monastery where he lives.
In a separate incident last year, a yeshiva student spat at a Sunday
morning procession of Armenian clergymen in Jerusalem’s Old City and
then scuffled with a priest. He later apologized.