Romanian church in Jerusalem stoned

Police said unknown assailants on Monday threw stones, bottles and garbage at the door of a church in Jerusalem, in the third attack against Christian sites in Israel in recent weeks. Police spokeswoman Luba Samri told AFP nobody was injured in the attack on the Romanian Orthodox church, St George's, but that the door was damaged. Police were investigating, she added. The church is located near a Jewish ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood. Senior rabbis have repeatedly prohibited attacks on Christians and their institutions, but they still occur from time to time nonetheless, whether motivated by nationalistic or anti-Christian sentiments. Last week, attackers spray-painted anti-Christian graffiti in Hebrew on a Franciscan monastery on Mount Zion just outside Jerusalem's Old City, in an apparent "price-tag" hate crime. And in September, vandals burnt the door of the Trappist monastery in Latrun, west of Jerusalem, and scrawled anti-Christian graffiti on its walls. There was no graffiti or other indication that Monday's attack was price-tag related. "Price tag" is a euphemism for revenge hate crimes by Israeli extremists, normally targeting Palestinians and Arabs and often involving the torching and vandalism of cars, mosques and olive trees.