Author: Manouk Vasilian

Nareg Keshishian is the new principal of Armenian Mesrobian School

The Board of Regents of the Prelacy Armenian Schools announced the appointment of Nareg Keshishian as the new principal of Armenian Mesrobian School. 

Nareg Keshishian is a proud graduate of Armenian Mesrobian School, class of 1981, and his educational background includes a degree in History from University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and teaching credential from Teachers College Columbia University. Mr. Keshishian has received numerous awards including Revson Foundation/NY Times 50 most inspirational teachers in NY City and the Hoover Hero award.

With a rich background in education, which includes teaching, mentoring, and administration, Keshishian has designed and implemented an enrichment program for Kindergarten, 4th, 5th and 9th grades at The Renaissance School, Queens NY and has served as a teacher and mentoring program coordinator at Paul Robeson HS, Brooklyn NY. After his time in New York,

Keshishian has served as a teacher, student body advisor and chair of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) school culture group at Hoover HS in Glendale, CA and as a teacher, Director of APEX credit recovery program, and chapter advisor for Junior State of America and Armenian club at Crescenta Valley High School in La Crescenta, CA.

“The Prelacy Armenian Schools and specifically Armenian Mesrobian School is a familiar environment for Nareg Keshishian. A graduate of Armenian Mesrobian School, Nareg Keshishian has the unique opportunity to circle back and return to his beloved Armenian Mesrobian School and serve the new generation of Armenian-American students,” said Sarkis Ourfalian the chair Board of Regents.

We have great confidence in Mr. Keshishian’s abilities and we are certain that he, along with the School Board and community, will be able to advance the educational growth of our students at Armenian Mesrobian School. His extensive background and experience in the educational field and knowledge about Armenian Mesrobian School and the greater Montebello community, makes him a unique candidate for the position. We strongly believe that with the support of the faculty and staff, the local School Board, and local and school committees Nareg Keshishian is destined to succeed as principal of Armenian Mesrobian School,” added Ourfalian.

The Board of Regents of the Prelacy Armenian Schools congratulated Nareg Keshishian and the Armenian Mesrobian School community and wished them continued success in their mission.

Vera Khachatryan speaks to reporters on July 31 in Yerevan

The daughter of a patient from Artsakh who on Saturday was detained while being evacuated to Armenia by the International Committee of the Red Cross said that Azerbaijani border guards threatened to use force against the ICRC worker accompanying him.

Azerbaijani forces detained 68-year-old Vagif Khachatryan on Saturday while he was being transported to Armenia by the ICRC. He was taken to Baku, where he was charged with “committing Genocide” in 1993.

A demonstration was held in front of the United Nations headquarters to protest Azerbaijan’s latest act of aggression. Among the participants was Khachatryan’s daughter, Vera, who has been living in Jermuk, Armenia since the 2020 war after losing her home in Kashatagh, Artsakh.
Vera Khachatryan said that her father was being transported to Armenia for an emergency heart operation.

Vagif Khachatryan at the Hakari checkpoint before being kidnapped by Azerbaijani guards on Jul. 29

“My sister was accompanying him [Vagif]. Everyone’s passports were checked at the Hakari Bridge checkpoint. When they took my father’s passport, they didn’t return it and told him to go inside to a doctor’s room for examination. Then they told him he had to go to another place for ten minutes,” said Vera Khachatryan, according to Armenpress.

“When my sister asked them not to take him away and when one of the ICRC representatives tried to intervene so that my father would not be taken away and instead be questioned on spot, they threatened to use force. And that’s how my dad was taken away to an unknown location. My father has been factually kidnapped,” Vera Khachatryan added.

She said that her mother, sisters and brothers all are living in Artsakh, adding that she was alone in Armenia. “This suffering is not only mine. Vagif Khachatryan is the personification of the entire Armenian nation,” Vera said.

The ICRC contacted Vera’s sister in Artsakh and informed her that Vagif was taken to a hospital in Baku. On Sunday the ICRC confirmed that they met Vagif upon his arrival in Baku.

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“The man was met by our delegates, one of whom is a medical doctor, and was given the possibility to contact his family,” the ICRC said in a social media post on Sunday.

Vera Khachatryan said that the charges brought against her father by Azerbaijan’s leadership and prosecutors were categorically false.

She appealed to the United Nations to utilize its many “levers” to return her father home.

“My father is not a criminal, he has led a dignified life. No one has the right to call him a criminal,” Vera Khachatryan said.

In a message on Monday, Artsakh President Arayik Harutyunyan warned that the security and humanitarian situation in Artsakh was deteriorating on a daily basis, citing Khachatryan’s kidnapping as the latest example of Azerbaijan’s ongoing aggression and called on the international community to intensify its efforts.

AChristian abbot was asked Wednesday by an official at Jerusalem’s Western Wall to hide his cross while accompanying Germany’s education minister to the holy site, drawing censure and an apology in the latest incident of Jewish-Christian tensions in the capital’s Old City.

The incident, which took place outside the prayer area of the Jewish holy site, was filmed and posted online by a reporter for German news outlet Der Spiegel.

Nikodemus Schnabel, the abbot of the Old City’s Dormition Abbey, was stopped by a woman who was said to be an employee of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the Haredi-dominated state-run body that administers the site.

The footage shows the woman telling Schnabel the pectoral cross he was wearing was “really big and inappropriate for this place” and asking him to stow it away, as Germany’s Federal Minister of Education and Research Bettina Stark-Watzinger stands by.

“This is very harsh, you’re not respecting my religion. You’re hindering me from my human right,” Schnabel says. “This is not a provocation, I am an abbot. This is my dress. The cross is part of my dress code. I’m a Roman Catholic abbot. You want me to not dress as my faith, that is the reality.”

The visit eventually took place as planned, but Schnabel continued to complain about the incident on Twitter, calling it “not so nice” and blaming the hard-right government, which was sworn in almost seven months ago.

“It is painful to see how the climate in this wonderful city is changing more and more for the worse under the new government,” the abbot wrote. “Jerusalem is big enough for everyone!”

The Western Wall Heritage Foundation issued a statement apologizing “for the distress that was caused,” but defending the actions of the woman while also noting that the site is open to all and there are no rules “on this issue” there

“The usher approached and innocently and politely asked whether the cross could be covered to prevent discomfort as happened recently in the Old City, out of a desire to respect the guest and the place. After he refused, his entry was of course not prevented and the usher respected [this] and headed off,” the statement read.

While there have long been occasional incidents of vandalism and harassment against Christian clergy in Jerusalem’s Old City, there has been a noticeable rise in attacks in recent months.

In November, two soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces’ Givati Brigade were detained on suspicion of spitting at the Armenian archbishop and other pilgrims during a procession in the Old City. In early January, two Jewish teens were arrested for damaging graves at the Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion.

The next week, the Maronite community center in the northern city of Ma’alot-Tarshiha was vandalized by unknown assailants over the Christmas holiday.

Jerusalem’s Armenian community buildings were also targeted by vandals, with multiple discriminatory phrases graffitied on the exterior of structures in the Armenian Quarter. On a Thursday night in late January, a gang of religious Jewish teens threw chairs at an Armenian restaurant inside the city’s New Gate. Vandalism at the Church of the Flagellation occurred the very next week.

And in March, a resident of southern Israel was arrested after attacking priests with an iron bar at the Tomb of the Virgin Mary in Gethsemane.

Some tie the rise in aggressive behavior recently to the composition of the current Israeli government, which is made up of ultra-Orthodox and extreme-right factions fiercely protective of Israel’s Orthodox Jewish character and strongly opposed to public displays of Christian worship.

President Isaac Herzog earlier this month condemned the growing trend, calling it “a true disgrace.”

“I utterly condemn violence, in all its forms, directed by a small and extreme group, towards the holy places of the Christian faith, and against Christian clergy in Israel,” Herzog said at a state memorial ceremony for Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl.

“This includes spitting, and the desecration of graves and churches,” he added, noting that the phenomenon has been on the rise “in the last weeks and months especially.”

Lazar Berman contributed to this report.