‘IF ISRAEL RECOGNIZES THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IT WON’T BE THE END OF THE WORLD’
Haaretz, Israel
June 28 2013
Cut off, is the way the new head of the Armenian church in Jerusalem
feels about his and his people’s status; cut off from an Israeli
bureaucracy and cut off from the rest of the world by the municipality.
On a recent afternoon in Jerusalem’s Old City, the Armenian
Patriarchate’s new leader was treated as royalty. Black-robed priests
and pilgrims young and old, visiting from Armenia, snapped photos and
grinned excitedly, as they waited in line to kiss Archbishop Nayrhan
Manougian’s hand during a reception.
Elected the 97th Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem in January, Manougian
is now one of the top Armenian Christian leaders worldwide, in a
community scattered over the globe. In Jerusalem, where the Armenian
Christian presence dates back almost 1,700 years, he is also one of
the most powerful Christian clerics. The Armenian patriarch shares
oversight at the ancient Christian holy sites with the Greek Orthodox
and Latin (Roman Catholic) patriarchs.
But despite the historical presence, the tiny Old City Armenian
community often feels sidelined, Manougian told Haaretz. As the number
of community members relentlessly shrinks, and is now only a few
hundred, he worries if there will be future generations. Day-to-day
life, he says, is also a balancing act, finding a place between the
powerful Jewish Israeli and Muslim Palestinian communities. Israeli
scholars echo the same concerns.
At the core of Armenian insecurities are successive Israeli governments
that have ruled over them since 1967 but never officially acknowledged
the 1915 Armenian genocide or its estimated 1.5 million deaths by
Ottoman Turkish forces.
Many of Jerusalem’s Armenians, including Manougian, are the children
and grandchildren of the survivors of the genocide. His father fled
Armenia through the desert that became known as the “death fields,”
as he headed to the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. Born in Aleppo in
1948 and orphaned by age 5, Manougian grew up in that city, with poor
relatives and the stories of the survivors around him. After seminary
and ordination, serving Armenian Christians took him from Lebanon,
across Europe and the United States, and to Haifa, Jaffa and finally
in 1998, to Jerusalem.
Here, Armenians believe that Israel’s silence on the events of 1915 is
based on maintaining favor with Turkey. “If you ask me, [recognizing
the genocide] is what they have to do,” said Manougian of Israel.
“What if they accept it? It won’t be the end of the world.”
Manougian also felt marginalized by Israel, while waiting five months
for the state to officially recognize his title. Manougian was elected
after the 2012 death of Patriarch Torkom Manoogian. Palestinian and
Jordanian leaders recognized him days after the January election.
Israel did not do so until June 23.
Initially, the patriarchate postponed Manougian’s inauguration,
waiting for Israel to reorganize the government following its January
22 elections. But as months passed and the recognition application
continued to be ignored, the patriarchate on June 4 held the
inauguration anyway.
There is no law requiring it, but sending a formal letter of
recognition is a Holy Land tradition dating to the Ottoman era,
Manougian said. “The first [Israeli] letter was signed by Ben-Gurion.”
The Prime Minister’s spokesperson did not give a reason for the delay.
But Dr. Amnon Ramon, a Hebrew University and Jerusalem Institute for
Israel Studies expert on local Christians, said that his impression
was that the delay was caused by bureaucracy and lack of priority. In
researching his 2012 book, “Christians and Christianity in the Jewish
State” (in Hebrew, published by the JIIS), he found that Israel’s
relations with Christians and church institutions are among the lowest
priorities in policy and practice of the local and national government
bodies, he said.
While Ramon works on improving government relations with Christians,
he also encourages Christians, including Armenians, not to allow
caution to stop them from lobbying for their own needs. Christians
“have to look at the Israeli side, the Palestinian side, be very
cautious, and sometimes this leads them to inaction.”
Old City Armenians live more closely with the Palestinians and say
their relations with them are better than with official Israel or some
of their Jewish neighbors. Bishop Aris Shirvanian says that “they
don’t spit on us,” referring to a phenomenon sometimes encountered
by Christian clergy in the Old City.
“We have no legal problems with them,” said Bishop Aris Shirvanian.
But the Palestinians have also not recognized the Armenian genocide.
“The whole of the Islamic countries do not recognize the genocide
because Turks are Muslims,” he said.
Being Christian in Jerusalem is complicated, he added. “When you are
dealing with two sides [Israelis and Palestinians], you have to not
take one side against the other.”
First to adopt Christianity
Armenians have a long, continuous presence in the city, from at
least the fourth century, after Armenia was the first nation in 301
C.E. to adopt Christianity as its official faith, said Yoav Loeff,
a Hebrew University teacher of Armenian language and history.
Until World War I, most of the Armenians here were monks or other
church people. After the war, the numbers in Jerusalem grew, as
Armenians fled the genocide and developed a vibrant lay community
here. There were also artisans who came to the city in 1919 under the
patronage of the British Mandate to renovate the vividly decorated
ceramic tiles on the Dome of the Rock. Their craft of hand-painting
tiles and ceramics deeply influenced Jerusalem’s artistic heritage.
This can be seen still today on signs and architectural facades, and
in the pottery in Israeli and Palestinian homes. The patriarchate
also opened a photography studio here in the 1850s, and the period
portraits done by some of its photographers are still renowned.
Until the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, local Armenians lived mostly in
Jerusalem, with some in Haifa, Jaffa, Lod, Ramle and Ramallah too,
numbering about 25,000 in total, Manougian says. While the majority
fled the war to surrounding areas – Ramallah, Jordan, Lebanon – a
few thousand ended up in the Old City’s Armenian Quarter. But with
growing economic and political tensions and lack of opportunities,
most left over the years.
There are no official statistics, but historians estimate that there
are some 3,000 people of Armenian descent in Israel, but most do not
identify with the community, coming from the former Soviet Union and
having married Jews.
The community’s center of life today is in the Armenian Quarter, which
has an elementary school, middle school, high school, a seminary, the
12th-century St. James Cathedral, the Church of the Holy Archangels,
and the Armenian manuscript library. But barely 400 Armenians live
there now, down from around 1,500 in 1967, said Manougian.
“I’m afraid that if things go on like this, there won’t be any
Christians left in this country,” he said, alluding to the wider
phenomenon of an ongoing exodus of Christians of all denominations
from the Holy Land. The city and state are not helping Armenians to
flourish, he added. “Nobody knows anything about Armenia or Armenians
… It’s not even on the list of their [concerns]. We don’t belong to
the community – they don’t [accept] us as members. We are third-class
citizens.”
Fueling this feeling are occasional spitting incidents. On June 19,
for example, an Orthodox Jewish man spat at the feet of patriarch
Manougian, during a procession of senior church clergy as they
walked toward the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Bishop Shirvanian,
who was present, said that such spitting incidents have declined
during the past year, but “you never know when it will happen while
walking down the street …. Most Jews are respectful, but some of
the ultra-Orthodox are obstinately spitting.”
A spokesperson for the Jerusalem police spokesperson said that it
received two spitting complaints from the Armenians this year. A
16-year-old and an adult were both arrested and held for several
hours. “We only know about it if a complaint is filed;” added the
spokesperson. “We always offer [church] processions a police escort,
because of this problem.”
Freedom of movement in and out of the Old City is also unpredictable.
Nestled inside Jerusalem’s Old City walls, the Armenian Quarter relies
on the Jaffa Gate for access to the rest of the city.
But the city closes the gate to vehicular traffic for several hours
at a time on more than 40 days a year, during large events like the
recent light festival and car races, church officials say. On June
16, the Latin Patriarchate issued a statement on behalf of Old City
residents, pilgrims, churches and patriarchates, which said that
Jaffa Gate provides “the only access to our patriarchates, churches
and convents. Instead of finding solutions to these interruptions that
cause great inconvenience and disruption, the situation has gone from
bad to worse.”
In recent weeks, Manougian said he had to get a police permit to travel
through Jaffa Gate on the Feast of Ascension, cancel plans to attend an
event at a Tel Aviv embassy, and console pilgrims denied access to the
Old City holy sites, because of closures. The municipality, he said,
“should have called the heads of the communities and asked them,
‘What do you think?’ Instead, they just announce and do it.”
A municipal spokesperson said that access is closed to residential
vehicles only during certain hours announced in advance, during certain
city festivals – such as the two days of the Formula One events and
the nine days of the recent light festival. Additionally, there are
sometimes temporary closures of Old City Gates on holy days of the
city’s various religious groups. At those times, he said, residents
with cars can use different gates.
In dealing with the Israel’s Interior Ministry, too, a frustrated
patriarchate has to wait “months, or years,” says Manougian, to get
visas to bring Armenians to study or teach at the quarter’s schools
and seminary. Priests ordained for life to serve the Jerusalem
patriarchate who do get visas find themselves having to return yearly
to the Interior Ministry to renew them. Father Pakrad Derjekian,
a patriarchate priest for 32 years, says that when he applied for
Jerusalem residency, he was told that he had been living in the city
for so many years on visas with no problem, so he should continue.
Clerics are “most of the time refused for Jerusalem residency,”
he said. “So we stopped applying.”
Christians of all denominations have problems getting visas to
study and teach here, and those who have long-term assignments have
trouble getting Jerusalem residency, confirmed Christianity researcher
Yisca Harani.
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