NOVANEWS
Vandals slash tires, deface walls of monastery with slogans such as ‘Jesus is a monkey’ and ‘Mary is a cow’ near Beit Shemesh.
Haaretz
A number of vandals spray-painted anti-American and anti-Christian slogans on the walls of a monastery and slashed the tires of four cars near Beit Shemesh overnight Monday.
On Tuesday morning, the monks at the Catholic Deir Rafat monastery awoke to discover the damage. Among the slogans written on the monastery walls were: “America is Nazi Germany,” “Price tag,” “Jesus is a monkey,” and “Mary is a cow.”
The Jerusalem Police opened an investigation into the incident.
This is the first time that the Deir Rafat monastery has fallen victim to an attack of this kind. Other monasteries in the area have suffered repeated attacks in the past. In August, a firebomb was hurled at the neighboring Beit Jimal monastery and its walls were spray-painted with graffiti.
The Price Tag Forum, a union of organizations set on stopping attacks of this kind said that since 2009, 29 monasteries and mosques have been desecrated in Israel and the West Bank. The forum called on the Israeli government to decree that so-called “price tag” attacks be deemed acts of terror.
In February, the tires of 16 cars were punctured and anti-Arab graffiti was sprayed in an East Jerusalem neighborhood. In December, a mosque in the Israeli Arab town of Baqa Al-Gharbiyye was defaced and windows were shattered on several cars parked nearby.
