Jerusalem Graffiti Targets Arabs, Christians

Vandals scrawled anti-Arab and anti-Christian slogans on a monastery and a school in Jerusalem overnight, Israeli police said on Tuesday.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said unknown people sprayed graffiti reading "death to Christians" and "price tag" on the walls of the Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Cross in west Jerusalem overnight.

"Price tag" is the name generally given to attacks carried out against Arabs and Palestinians and their property in response to Israeli government action against settlements in the West Bank.

There has been a spate of such attacks in the last year, targeting cars, schools, homes and mosques in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Arab villages in Israel.

In a second incident overnight, vandales targeted a school that teaches Arab and Jewish children in both Arabic and Hebrew, the only institution of its kind in Jerusalem, police said.

They spray painted "Kahane was right, death to Arabs" on the wall of the school, which is in the Arab east Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Safafa.

"Kahane" is a reference to Meir Kahane, the founder of an extremist anti-Arab Jewish movement called Kach, which is officially outlawed in Israel.

Kahane was assassinated in 1990, but his ideology continues to find favor among some of Israel's most extreme right-wing settlers.

Rosenfeld said an investigation into the incidents had been opened.

The Palestinians accuse Israel of failing to pursue those behind "price tag" attacks, saying that only individuals accused of targeting Israeli military facilities in such attacks have been charged.

Israel says it pursues those cases where evidence is available and notes that its political leaders have condemned the attacks, particularly against mosques.