Israeli settlers Thursday evening attacked an Armenian restaurant at the New Gate in the Christian Quarter of the occupied city of Jerusalem, local sources confirmed.
The group of radical settlers attacked a group of diners, mostly Armenians, who were enjoying their meals at the Taboon Wine Bar, with a video footage showing the Jewish radicals throwing chairs wildly toward the restaurant and those who had been seated there.
Israeli Police, who arrived at the scene one hour later, made no arrests among the attackers.
Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa Friday afternoon visited the restaurant owners and adjoining shopkeepers whose businesses were the target of these attacks, in order to show the church’s solidarity with them in the face of this latest threat to the Christian presence in Jerusalem’s Old City.
The attack came as extremist settlers cursed Islam’s Prophet Mohammed and chanted ‘Death to Arabs’ near Bab Al-Amoud plaza in occupied Jerusalem, attacking Palestinian youths, on Thursday.
The settlers’ march to Bab al-Amoud is reminiscent of the so-called “Flag March”, annually organized by Israeli Jewish supremacists to celebrate Israel’s occupation and colonization of East Jerusalem since 1967.
Each year, thousands of Israeli members of far-right groups participate in the march, waving Israeli flags and chanting racist and genocidal slogans, as they pass by Palestinian onlookers and businesses passing through Jerusalem’s iconic Damascus Gate, entering the narrow alleys of the Old City’s Muslim Quarter and ending at the Western Wall plaza, created by Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem’s ancient Moroccan Quarter in the first days of the occupation.
Expressing their religious as well as their ethnic hatred, the fanatical participants frequently belt out racist slogans, including “Muhammad is dead,” to denigrate the prophet of Islam and the faith of Muslims, and “Zachreni Na,” with its call for ethnic cleansing: “Palestine – May their name be wiped out!”
Israel uses the Jewish nationalist name “Judea and Samaria” to refer to the occupied West Bank to reinforce its bogus claims to the territory and to give them a veneer of historical and religious legitimacy.
Source: Palestine News & Information Agency