Anti-Christian graffiti has been sprayed on a wall of a Jerusalem abbey built where the mother of Jesus died in an incident similar to previous acts blamed on Jewish extremists

The graffiti written in Hebrew on an outside wall of the Dormition Abbey included phrases such as “kill the pagans” and “death to the Christian unbelievers, enemies of Israel”, a spokesman for the Catholic Church in the Holy Land said. Police said that the graffiti had been discovered during a patrol and an investigation had been opened. The Benedictine abbey is located on Mount Zion across from east Jerusalem’s Old City and next to the site where Jesus’s Last Supper occurred. It was previously hit in 2014, when furniture and wooden crosses were burned. “This time it amounts to a real call to murder Christians,” said church spokesman Wadi Abu Nassar. Jewish extremists have targeted Palestinians, Christians and even Israeli military property in “price-tag” attacks — a term that indicates there is a price to be paid for moves against Jewish settlers. Recently, two Israelis, including a minor, were charged over the 2014 incident at the Dormition Abbey as well as an arson attack at the Church of the Multiplication on the Sea of Galilee. That church is located where Jesus performed the miracle of loaves and fishes. The most prominent suspected Jewish extremist attack recently was the July 2015 firebombing of a Palestinian home in the West Bank that killed a toddler along with his mother and father. On January 3, 2016 an Israeli court charged two suspected Jewish extremists over the firebombing, including the minor accused in the 2014 arson at the Dormition Abbey. Vatican efforts to negotiate greater rights at the neighboring Upper Room, where the Last Supper occurred, have sparked opposition from nationalist and Orthodox Jews, who revere part of the building as the tomb of King David.