Vandals Spray 'Price Tag' Graffiti on Jerusalem Monastery

Vandals spray painted hateful graffiti on the walls of the Monastery of the Cross and on a car that was parked nearby, and slashed the tires of three vehicles.

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The graffiti read "Happy Hanukkah – price tag", "Jesus is a son of a bitch", and "Victory for the Maccabees." The police opened an investigation into the incident, which appears to be part of a right-wing revenge campaign against Israel's policies in West Bank settlements.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat admonished the vandals and instructed city employees to remove the graffiti immediately. "We cannot accept such offensive and extreme incidents that are done in order to erode the coexistence in Jerusalem," Barkat said.

"I spoke with the Jerusalem Police Chief Yossi Parienty and we agreed that resolute action must be taken to find those responsible and bring them to justice quickly," he added.

In a separate incident Tuesday night, vandals set a car on fire in a town near Ramallah and spray painted the words "price tag" near it.

Price tag attacks have targeted monasteries and mosques in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas a number of times in recent months.

A Franciscan monastery on Mount Zion was vandalized three months ago, with simlar graffiti spraypainted on its gate to that scrawled on the Monastery of the Cross wall.

The Abbaye de Notre-Dame de Sept-Douleurs in Latroun was vandalized a week before that, with one of its doors set ablaze. No-one was hurt in the incident.

In September, the phrase "Price tag Migron" was found spray painted on the wall of mosque in a village southwest of Hebron in the West Bank, in reference to an outpost slated for demolition.

The past two months have also seen the rise in violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank. Last week, the police arrested three West Bank settlers after they set fire to a car belonging to a Palestinian from Dahariya while allegedly on their way to more nefarious activity.