181 Obama in Oslo: Nobel "Peacenik of 2009" Prize despite "his" Afghan war

(1) Obama in Oslo: Nobel "Peacenik of 2009" Prize despite "his" Afghan war
(2) Anti-Semitism institute established at University of London
(3) Christian clergy in Jerusalem spat upon by Jewish fanatics

(1) Obama in Oslo: Nobel "Peacenik of 2009" Prize despite "his" Afghan war

From: efgh1951 <efgh1951@yahoo.com> Date: 09.12.2009 02:06 PM

Obama's Nobel & START: Peacemaker arrives empty-handed

There are many a smirk as US President Barack Obama flies to Oslo to be crowned Peacenik of 2009, but it is the Russians who get the prize for taking the shine off Obama's trophy, notes Eric Walberg

Tuesday, 08 December 2009

http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=208:obamas-nobel-a-start-peacemaker-arrives-empty-handed&catid=39:europe-canada-and-us-&Itemid=92

Obama desperately needed a new nuclear arms treaty to replace START I to provide some justification for the Nobel Committee's gamble. The award in the face of US imperial wars and hubris is proving to be extremely embarrassing to everyone, left and right. In awarding the Nobel Prize to Obama on 9 October, the selection committee "in particular looked at Obama's vision and work toward a world without atomic weapons," giving him an out, if he could at least bring a nuclear arms treaty with him.

Instead, US inspectors packed their bags last week and left Russian nuclear sites unmonitored for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union almost two decades ago. The expiration of the treaty and stalled talks on a replacement dealt a blow to those in the Obama administration who had hoped to achieve at least this one tangible step before the president goes to Norway.

The Kremlin knows when it has a good hand, and it coolly played along with White House officials frantically trying to broker a signing ceremony for the new START treaty in the Czech Republic on 11 December, after Obama's visit Copenhagen for global climate treaty negotiations and his trip to Oslo. Keep in mind that the Czechs are gung-ho to be part of US missile plans for Europe, which are clearly aimed at Russia as much as any other state. How fitting to have the Russians grovel in Prague and cheer on the war president as the world's symbol of peace and goodwill.

But few children older than six or seven believe in Santa, and the supposedly "minor" details left to negotiate to make sure Santa arrives on schedule at the White House are in fact not so minor.

Moscow December 2009 is not Moscow July 1991, when START I was signed, just weeks before the coup which deposed Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, as the Soviet Union descended into chaos. The original START allowed for US inspectors to live near the country's primary missile production facility in Votkinsk in the Udmurtia republic, deep in the heart of Russia, and carry out intrusive inspections on demand, something which Gorbachev was in no position to demand from Bush senior.

The need to re-evaluate this lopsided one-way monitoring process just cannot be papered over. It amounts to whether Moscow will accept its subservient role in the US-run nuclear club or not. Russia wants to end the imbalance, while Washington wants to maintain and even increase its access to Russia military secrets.

The other issue -- how many warheads and launchers each side will be allowed -- probably could be settled without too much effort. The Russian government has said it is more than happy to reduce its strategic arms stockpiles by "several fold" if the US would only give up plans for Star Wars and its planned European bases. After all, what difference does it make if you can destroy the world twice as opposed to only once?

But, after Obama promised not to put its missiles in Russia's backyard in September in order to clinch a deal with the Russians to allow NATO weapons and armies to pass through Russia on their way to Afghanistan, his sundry minions have gone out of their way to backpedal. The Czechs and Poles are increasing their troop numbers in Afghanistan, after all, and they are not easily mollified. Likewise, US and NATO officials continue to assure Ukraine and Georgia that they will soon be part of the happy NATO family, despite Obama's obvious lack of interest in thereby further provoking the Russians. These unstated ploys are really just as much sticking points as the officially acknowledged ones.

START I was indeed historic. In 1985, at the height of the Cold War, the US and Russia possessed 23,000 and 39,000 operational warheads each. By 1995, these arsenals were more than halved to 11,000 and 16,000 respectively. When the Soviet Union was dissolved on 31 December, 1991, Russia and the former Soviet republics with nuclear capabilities (Ukraine, Belarus, Kazahkstan) agreed, in the Lisbon Protocol signed on 5 December, 1994, to abide by the treaty until its expiry 15 years later. Daryl Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association, says that since the START I treaty was signed, the US and Russia have slashed their strategic nuclear arsenals even more. "Today, the United States deploys approximately 2,200 strategic warheads, and Russia deploys somewhere slightly above 2,200 strategic warheads today on a smaller number of strategic delivery vehicles."

The treaty looked doomed as time ran out under US president George W Bush, who dismayed the Russians as he pursued a policy of confrontation and encirclement of Russia and launched war after war abroad. But Obama seemed to promise a less confrontation approach with his talk of "pressing the reset button" with Russia, and during his state visit to Russia last July, Obama and Medvedev agreed to hold talks dedicated to extending START I.

With Obama's embarrassing dilemma -- the Nobel Peace Prize and his vow to intensify the war in Afghanistan -- he was keen to bring to Oslo at least a scrap of paper to justify the committee's faith in him. The Russians, eager to change the trajectory of their relations with Washington, played along. However, to expect the Russians to lie down and play dead again was foolish on the part of Obama's advisers. Sergei Markov, a United Russia State Duma deputy, said the main difficulty would be achieving a treaty that viewed Russia and the US as equals."It was very difficult to negotiate a balance when in the Cold War the balance of power was 50-50, but in the 1990s it was 90-10 for the US. Today we are still far from equals," he said, hinting at what might be the case if Russia continues its recovery and the US continues its decline.

But it is not just Russia that is the spoiler. Otfried Nassauer, director of the Berlin Information Centre for Transatlantic Security, said the US has also shown obstinacy on some issues for domestic political reasons. Obama needs at least seven Republican votes in the Senate to ensure ratification.

Anatoly Khramchikhin, an analyst with the Institute for Political and Military Analysis, said the political impetus might be lost if talks run into next year. "It is just very hard to bring the interests of both sides into one place," he said.

As START I was due to expire, the US and Russian presidents issued a joint statement: "We express our commitment, as a matter of principle, to continue to work together in the spirit of the START treaty following its expiration, as well as our firm intention to ensure that a new treaty on strategic arms enters into force at the earliest possible date." In July, Obama and Medvedev agreed to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear warheads to 1,700 each within seven years, a START I Mark II if you like, though they did not sign anything.

So we can hope that Obama's shiny medal will at least remind him of this one small step he has made towards ridding the world of nuclear weapons, a goal that he has expressed more than once. During his visit to Prague in April, for instance, Obama pledged to push for ratification of the 13-year-old Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, much to the displeasure of many a US hawk.

Ironically, it may be easier to pursue his dream without a new treaty, which would need those pesky seven Senate Republicans to get it ratified. The Senate is notorious for balking at approving peace treaties, most notably, the 10-year-old Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines. Obama supported it back in 2006, but as president, apparently is unable to do anything about getting the Senate to ratify it. Bemoans Senator Patrick Leahy: "The administration's approach to this issue has been cursory, half-hearted, and deeply disappointing. One would hope that an administration that portrays itself as a global leader on issues of humanitarian law and arms control recognises this is an opportunity."  ***

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/

(2) Anti-Semitism institute established at University of London

From: Josef Schwanzer <donauschwob@optusnet.com.au> Date: 09.12.2009 03:20 AM

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1260181012103&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Anti-Semitism institute to be established at University of London
Dec. 7, 2009
JONNY PAUL, Jerusalem post correspondent , THE JERUSALEM POST

The University of London is set to open a new institute for the study of anti-Semitism, which will work in partnership with the world's oldest Holocaust library, after London-based Pears Foundation donated £1.5 million to the project.

The Pears Foundation and University of London's Birkbeck College announced the establishment of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism last week. The new institute will become part of the college's School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy and will have close links with the College's School of Arts and its School of Law.

The Institute will work in partnership with the Wiener Library, the world's oldest Holocaust memorial institution, which is set to move to the university in 2011 from its current central London location.

The library will allow Birkbeck academic staff and students, as well as others, to use its vast resource for research, teaching and outreach activities in the area of anti-Semitism, religious and racial intolerance.

"We are delighted that the Pears Foundation donation enables us to establish the institute and also that we will be able to provide a home for the Wiener Library," Prof. David Latchman the master of Birkbeck, said.

"Birkbeck commands an unparalleled combination of expertise in the field of anti-Semitism and intolerance in a wide range of disciplines, from political sciences to psychosocial studies and from history to law," he continued.

"Birkbeck will also offer related courses to attract a wide range of students from a host of backgrounds - from community, religious and educational leaders, school teachers; local government employees and civil servants. Birkbeck's specialization in part-time university courses for those at work will enable its students to apply what they learn to their working lives, as teachers, civil servants and community leaders.

"It is this singular mix that will provide the institute's foundation for research, teaching and its contribution to public policy and debate. Birkbeck's expertise, particularly within the history department, as well as the partnership with the Wiener Library, means that the institute will bring a historical dimension to the subject that doesn't exist anywhere else," Latchman added.

The new institute will set out to fulfill three key aims - to offer an unaffiliated source of public policy advice, carry out and disseminate high-quality research and provide a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, including postgraduate research programs.

"The Pears Foundation commissioned a research/mapping report which established that there appears to be no academic faculty or institution at any UK university undertaking the role we foresee for this new institute," said Trevor Pears, executive chair of the Pears Foundation.

"We are setting up the institute with Birkbeck at this particular time because our foundation considers that this strategic approach to the study of anti-Semitism is not being sufficiently addressed elsewhere and is long overdue.

"We believe that the study of anti-Semitism is vital to the understanding of all racism and xenophobia. Our concern is that anti-Semitism is misunderstood and viewed solely as a Jewish issue. We believe anti-Semitism is a 'societal illness' - a rise in anti-Semitism signals something is wrong or worsening in society."

The institute is the result of several years of work, reflecting the Pears Foundation's philosophy of promoting understanding of 'the other' through better education. This is exemplified in the foundation's work in Holocaust Education; the School Linking Network, which supports local authorities across the UK to bring together high school students from diverse backgrounds; and Shared Futures, an interactive educational resource for students and teachers that explores Judaism in Britain today.

The Wiener Library is the world's oldest institution for the study of anti-Semitism and the crimes of Nazi Germany, the history of German and Central European Jewry, the Holocaust and its aftermath. It is a major archive comprising not only 60,000 books and 2,000 periodical titles but also 1.5 million pages of archival material.

(3) Christian clergy in Jerusalem spat upon by Jewish fanatics

From: Kristoffer Larsson <kristoffer.larsson@sobernet.nu> Date: 09.12.2009 07:35 PM

"All 15 monks at our friary have been spat at," he said. "Every [Christian cleric in the Old City] who's been here for awhile, who dresses in robes in public, has a story to tell about being spat at. The more you get around, the more it happens." …

For Christian clergy in the Old City, being spat at by Jewish fanatics "is a part of life," said the American Jewish Committee's Rabbi David Rosen, Israel's most prominent Jewish interfaith activist.

"I hate to say it, but we've grown accustomed to this. Jewish religious fanatics spitting at Christian priests and nuns has become a tradition," said Roman Catholic Father Massimo Pazzini, sitting inside the Church of the Flagellation on the Via Dolorosa. …

Christians in Israel are a small, weak community known for "turning the other cheek," so these Jewish xenophobes feel free to spit on them; they don't spit on Muslims in the Old City because they're afraid to, the clerics noted.

And what does John Hagee have to say about this?

KL

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1259231077244&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer

Mouths filled with hatred

Nov. 26, 2009
Larry Derfner , THE JERUSALEM POST

Father Samuel Aghoyan, a senior Armenian Orthodox cleric in Jerusalem's Old City, says he's been spat at by young haredi and national Orthodox Jews "about 15 to 20 times" in the past decade. The last time it happened, he said, was earlier this month. "I was walking back from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and I saw this boy in a yarmulke and ritual fringes coming back from the Western Wall, and he spat at me two or three times."

Wearing a dark-blue robe, sitting in St. James's Church, the main Armenian church in the Old City, Aghoyan said, "Every single priest in this church has been spat on. It happens day and night."

Father Athanasius, a Texas-born Franciscan monk who heads the Christian Information Center inside the Jaffa Gate, said he's been spat at by haredi and national Orthodox Jews "about 15 times in the last six months" - not only in the Old City, but also on Rehov Agron near the Franciscan friary. "One time a bunch of kids spat at me, another time a little girl spat at me," said the brown-robed monk near the Jaffa Gate.

"All 15 monks at our friary have been spat at," he said. "Every [Christian cleric in the Old City] who's been here for awhile, who dresses in robes in public, has a story to tell about being spat at. The more you get around, the more it happens."

A nun in her 60s who's lived in an east Jerusalem convent for decades says she was spat at for the first time by a haredi man on Rehov Agron about 25 years ago. "As I was walking past, he spat on the ground right next to my shoes and he gave me a look of contempt," said the black-robed nun, sitting inside the convent. "It took me a moment, but then I understood."

Since then, the nun, who didn't want to be identified, recalls being spat at three different times by young national Orthodox Jews on Jaffa Road, three different times by haredi youth near Mea She'arim and once by a young Jewish woman from her second-story window in the Old City's Jewish Quarter.

But the spitting incidents weren't the worst, she said - the worst was the time she was walking down Jaffa Road and a group of middle-aged haredi men coming her way pointed wordlessly to the curb, motioning her to move off the sidewalk to let them pass, which she did.

"That made me terribly sad," said the nun, speaking in ulpan-trained Hebrew. Taking personal responsibility for the history of Christian anti-Semitism, she said that in her native European country, such behavior "was the kind of thing that they - no, that we used to do to Jews."

News stories about young Jewish bigots in the Old City spitting on Christian clergy - who make conspicuous targets in their long dark robes and crucifix symbols around their necks - surface in the media every few years or so. It's natural, then, to conclude that such incidents are rare, but in fact they are habitual. Anti-Christian Orthodox Jews, overwhelmingly boys and young men, have been spitting with regularity on priests and nuns in the Old City for about 20 years, and the problem is only getting worse.

"My impression is that Christian clergymen are being spat at in the Old City virtually every day. This has been constantly increasing over the last decade," said Daniel Rossing. An observant, kippa-wearing Jew, Rossing heads the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations and was liaison to Israel's Christian communities for the Ministry of Religious Affairs in the '70s and '80s.

For Christian clergy in the Old City, being spat at by Jewish fanatics "is a part of life," said the American Jewish Committee's Rabbi David Rosen, Israel's most prominent Jewish interfaith activist.

"I hate to say it, but we've grown accustomed to this. Jewish religious fanatics spitting at Christian priests and nuns has become a tradition," said Roman Catholic Father Massimo Pazzini, sitting inside the Church of the Flagellation on the Via Dolorosa.

These are the very opposite of isolated incidents. Father Athanasius of the Christian Information Center called them a "phenomenon." George Hintlian, the unofficial spokesman for the local Armenian community and former secretary of the Armenian Patriarchate, said it was "like a campaign."

Christians in Israel are a small, weak community known for "turning the other cheek," so these Jewish xenophobes feel free to spit on them; they don't spit on Muslims in the Old City because they're afraid to, the clerics noted.

THE ONLY Israeli authority who has shown any serious concern over this matter, the one high official whom Christian and Jewish interfaith activists credit for stepping into the fray, is Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger.

On November 11, Metzger addressed a letter to the "rabbis of the Jewish Quarter," writing that he had "heard a grave rumor about yeshiva students offending heaven…[by] spitting on Christian clergy who walk about the Old City of Jerusalem." Such attackers, he added, are almost tantamount torodfim, or persecutors, which is one of the worst class of offenders in Jewish law. They violate the injunction to follow the "pathways of peace," Metzger wrote, and are liable to provoke anti-Semitism overseas.

"I thus issue the fervent call to root out this evil affliction from our midst, and the sooner the better," wrote the chief rabbi.

Metzger published the letter in response to an appeal from Armenian Archbishop Nourhan Manougian, an appeal that came in the wake of a September 5 incident in the Old City in which a haredi man spat on a group of Armenian seminarians who, in turn, beat him up. (See box.)

This is not the first time Metzger has spoken out against the spitting - he did so five years ago after the most infamous incident on record, when Manougian himself was spat on by an Old City yeshiva student during an Armenian Orthodox procession. In response, the archbishop slapped the student's face, and then the student tore the porcelain ceremonial crucifix off Manougian's neck and threw it to the ground, breaking it.

Then interior minister Avraham Poraz called the assault on the archbishop "repulsive" and called for a police crackdown on anti-Christian attacks in the Old City. Police reportedly punished the student by banning him from the Old City for 75 days.

Seated in his study in the Armenian Quarter, Manougian, 61, said that while he personally has not been assaulted since that time, the spitting attacks on other Armenian clergy have escalated.

"The latest thing is for them to spit when they pass [St. James's] monastery. I've seen it myself a couple of times," he said. "Then there's the boy from the Jewish Quarter who spits at the Armenian women when he sees them wearing their crosses, then he runs away. And during one of our processions from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre this year, a fellow in a yarmulke and fringes began deliberately cutting through our lines, over and over. The police caught him and he started yelling, 'I'm free to walk wherever I want!' That's what these settler types are always saying: 'This is our country and we can do whatever we want!'"

Where are the police in all this? If they happen to be on the scene, such as at the recent procession Manougian described, they will chase the hooligans - but even if they catch them, they only tell them off and let them go, according to several Christian clergymen.

"The police tell us to catch them and bring them in, but then they tell us not to use violence, so how are we supposed to catch them?" asked Aghoyan, a very fit-looking 68-year-old. "Once a boy came up to me and spat in my face, and I punched him and knocked him down, and an Armenian seminarian and I brought him to the police station [next to the Armenian Quarter]. They released him in a couple of hours. I've made many, complaints to the police, I'm tired of it. Nothing ever gets done."

Said Rosen, "The police say, 'Show us the evidence.' They want the Christians to photograph the people spitting at them so they can make arrests, but this is very unrealistic - by the time you get the camera out, the attack is over and there's nothing to photograph."

Victims of these attacks say that in the great majority of cases the assailants do not spit in their faces or on their clothes, but on the ground at their feet. "When we complain about this, the police tell us, 'But they're not spitting on you, just near you,'" said Manougian.

Sitting inside the Church of the Flagellation on the Via Dolorosa, Pazzini recalled: "Early this year there were about 100 Orthodox Jewish boys who came past the church singing and dancing. The police were with them - I don't know what the occasion was, maybe it was a holiday, maybe it had to do with the elections. There was a group of Franciscan monks standing in front of the church, and a few of the Jewish boys went up to the monks, spat on them, then went back into the crowd. I went up to a policeman and he told me, 'Sorry about that, but look, they're just kids.'"

Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby refused to provide an official comment on the situation on behalf of the Old City police station. "We don't give interviews on relations between Jews and Christians in the Old City," he said. "We're not sociologists, we're policemen."

The Jerusalem municipality likewise refused to be interviewed. "We have not received any complaints about this matter and we do not deal with things of this nature," said assistant city spokesman Yossi Gottesman.

EVERY CHRISTIAN cleric interviewed for this article stressed that they weren't blaming Israeli Jewry as a whole for the spitting attacks; on the contrary, they said their general reception by Israeli Jews, both secular and religious, was one of welcome.

"I keep in mind that for every person here who's spat at me, there are many more who've come up and said hello," said Father Athanasius.

"I studied at Hebrew University for seven years and the atmosphere was wonderful. I made a lot of friends there," said Pazzini.

"My class members at ulpan visited our convent, they couldn't have been more warm and friendly," said the nun in east Jerusalem. She recalled that a group of boys in a schoolyard near the ulpan once threw stones at her and another nun, and two ulpan teachers saw it, became outraged and went straight into the school principal's office. "The kids never threw stones at us again," the nun said.

"I don't want to cause troubles for Israel - I love Am Yisrael," said Manougian, adding that he felt completely unthreatened and at ease when visiting Tel Aviv, Haifa and other parts of the country. The problem of belligerent Orthodox Jews spitting at Christian clergy, added Rossing, is evidently confined to Jerusalem.

There was a time when priests and nuns in the capital went virtually unmolested. In the first 20 years or so after Israel conquered the Old City in the 1967 Six Day War, spitting incidents did occur, but only once in a very long while. Old City police would lock the offender up for the night, which proved an effective deterrent, said Hintlian. "Whatever problem we had, we could call [mayor] Teddy Kollek's office, we could call people in the Foreign Ministry, the Interior Ministry, we could call Israeli ambassadors. In those days, Christians in Jerusalem were 'overprivileged,'" he said.

That era of good feelings came about as a result of two circumstances, continued Hintlian, the leading chronicler of Jerusalem's Armenian history. For one, he says, Israel in general and Jerusalem in particular were much more liberal in those days, and secondly, Israeli authorities were out to convince the Christian world that they could be trusted with their newly acquired stewardship over the Old City's holy places.

"Now Israel doesn't need the world's approval anymore for its sovereignty over Jerusalem, so our role is finished," said Hintlian. "Now we don't have anyone in authority to turn to."

Yisca Harani, a veteran Jewish interfaith activist who lectures on Christianity to Israeli tour guides at Touro College, likewise says the change for the worse came about 20 years ago. She blames the spitting attacks on the view of Christianity that's propagated at haredi and national Orthodox yeshivot.

"I move around the Old City a lot," she said, "I come in contact with these people, and what they learn in these fundamentalist yeshivot is that the goyis the enemy, a hater of Israel. All they learn about Christianity is the Holocaust, pogroms, anti-Semitism."

Rosen recalls that in 1994, after Israel and the Vatican opened diplomatic relations, he organized an international Jewish-Christian conference in Jerusalem, "and the city's chief rabbi called me in and said, 'How can you do this? Don't you know it's forbidden for us? How can you encourage these people to meet with us?'

"He told me that when he sees a Christian clergyman, he crosses the street and recites, 'You shall totally abhor and totally disdain…' This is a biblical verse that refers to idolatry." Rosen noted that the Jerusalem chief rabbi of the time, like the more insular Orthodox Jews in general, considered Christians to be idolators.

The people doing the spitting, according to all the Christian victims and Jewish interfaith activists interviewed, are invariably national Orthodox or haredi Jews; in every attack described by Christian clerics, the assailant was wearing a kippa.

The great majority of the attackers were teenage boys and men in their 20s. However, the supposition was that they came not only from the Old City yeshivot but also from outside. Hintlian and Aghoyan noted that the spitting attacks tended to spike on Fridays and Saturdays, when masses of Orthodox Jews stream to the Western Wall.

The hot spots in the Old City are the places where resident Orthodox Jews and Christians brush up against one another - inside Jaffa Gate, on the roads leading through the Armenian Quarter to the Jewish Quarter and around Mount Zion, which lies just outside the Old City and is the site of a several yeshivot.

Of all Old City Christians, the Armenians get spat on most frequently because their quarter stands closest to those hot spots.

Near Mount Zion, four teenage boys on their way to the Diaspora Yeshiva affirmed with a nod that they knew about the spitting attacks on Christian clergy. "But it's nobody from our yeshiva," said one boy, 16, who noted that he'd seen it happen twice right around there - once by a boy wearing a crocheted kippa and once by a boy without a kippa. (This was the only mention I heard of a secular Jew spitting on a Christian.)

"We're against it because it's a desecration - it gives religious Jews a bad name," said the boy. He added, however, "Inside, I also feel like spitting on the Christians because everybody knows how they preach against the Jews. But I'd never do it."

ONLY A TINY proportion of the spitting incidents are reported to police. "When somebody spits at our feet, or at the door to the monastery, we don't even pay attention to it anymore, we take it for granted," said Aghoyan. We have no suspect or evidence to give the police, nor any reason to think the police care, he said.

Pazzini, the vice dean of the seminary at the Church of the Flagellation, said the dean of the seminary had his face spat upon, but he rejected Pazzini's urgings to file a police complaint. "He told me, 'There's no point, this is the way things are around here,'" Pazzini said.

Even outrageous incidents, one after another, go unreported to the police and unknown to the public. About a month ago, when a senior Greek Orthodox bishop was driving into the Jaffa Gate, a young Jewish man motioned him to roll down his window, and when he did, the young man spat in the bishop's face, said Hintlian.

Father Athanasius says that about a year ago, he witnessed the archbishop of Milan, which is one of the world's largest Roman Catholic dioceses, get spat at in the Old City. "The archbishop was with another Italian bishop and a group of pilgrims, and a class of about a dozen adolescent boys in crocheted kippot and sidecurls came by with their teacher. They stopped in front of the archbishop and his guests, the boys began spitting at the ground next to their feet, and then they just kept walking like this was normal," said Father Athanasius. "I saw this with my own eyes."

Rosen, Rossing and Hintlian say the most frustrating thing is that there's no longer anyone in authority who's ready to try to solve this problem, and the reason is that the Christian community in Israel is too small and powerless to rate high-level attention anymore.

"In the old days there were ministers and a mayor in Jerusalem who took the Christian minority seriously, but now virtually everyone dealing with them is a third-tier official, and while these individuals may have wonderful intentions, they have no authority," said Rosen. As far as the current cabinet ministers go, he said the phenomenon of Orthodox Jews spitting on Christian clergy "is at most distressing to some of them, while there are other ministers whose attitude toward non-Jews in general is downright deplorable."

Among Christian victims and Jewish interfaith activists alike, the consensus is that two steps are needed to stop the spitting attacks. One, of course, would be much stronger law enforcement by police. The other would be an educational effort against this "campaign," this "phenomenon," this "tradition" - although it may be that there's nothing to teach - that a person, even an adolescent, either knows it's wrong to spit on priests and nuns or he doesn't.

"We can't tell the Jews in this country what to do - they have to see this as an offense," said Father Athanasius. "There's only a small part of the population that's doing it, but the Jewish establishment has to bring them under control."