Violence against Christians is on the rise in Israel
Under Israeli rule, Christians in Israel and the West Bank have suffered increasing attacks, including spitting on clergy, physical harassment and the vandalism and destruction of churches, cemeteries and other Christian symbols. The incidents, carried out by ultra-Orthodox Jews, religious nationalists and settlers alike, have largely gone unchecked as Israeli police stand idly by.
On July 7, 2025, Jewish settlers targeted the Christian town of Taybeh, east of Ramallah in the central West Bank. They set fire to Palestinian cars, spray-painted racist and threatening graffiti on the wall of a Palestinian home and torched both the ancient Christian cemetery and the fifth-century St. George (Al-Khader) Church. The violence drew condemnation from local church leaders and the international community, who denounced the attacks on religious sites.
Just a month earlier, on June 3, Israeli settlers attacked the Armenian Convent of Old Jerusalem. Video footage showed settlers spitting on the monastery, crosses and holy icons. The police station, located just a minute away from the monastery, responded 25 minutes later—after the attackers had already fled.
Anti-Christian incidents in Israel and the West Bank are not new. The following is a summary of a decade of attacks:
On June 18, 2015, members of the far-right Jewish group “Revolt” set fire to the Church of the Multiplication in Tabgha, an abandoned Palestinian village on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, which was the site of the biblical miracle of loaves and fish. Hebrew graffiti denounced the worship of “idols.” Investigations by the police and the Israeli Security Agency (Shabak) indicated that the perpetrators were Jews associated with the “price tag” movement, a campaign of vandalism in the occupied West Bank by extremist Israeli settler youths against Arabs, Israeli Christians and Palestinians alike.
Between October 2012 and June 2013, the Jerusalem Catholic Benedictine Dormition Abbey—located outside the Zion Gate walls on the site where the Virgin Mary is believed to have spent her final days—was repeatedly vandalized with anti-Christian graffiti in Hebrew. The messages likened Christians to monkeys and called for revenge against Jesus. Two cars on the property were also vandalized, their tires slashed and graffiti sprayed on a gate of the nearby Greek Orthodox cemetery. This was a “price tag” terrorist attack carried out by Jewish religious nationalist extremists.
On May 26, 2014, a box of wooden crosses was set on fire inside the Dormition Abbey. At the same time as the arson, Pope Francis was conducting Mass in the upper room next door for the Last Supper.
In December 2014, a Jewish vandal entered the Dormition Abbey by jumping over the perimeter fence, damaging a cross and several statues in the cemetery, including one marking the grave of a monk with Israeli nationality. Fr. Nikodemus Schnabel, abbot of the Dormition Abbey, was verbally assaulted and spat on several times by Jewish extremists for publicly wearing a cross around his neck.
The Armenian Orthodox Convent in the Old City of Jerusalem has also faced repeated vandalism, and its clergy have endured dozens of verbal and physical assaults, a form of “price tag” terrorism by young Jewish religious nationalists. This hostile behavior has become a phenomenon.
On the afternoon of June 8, 2019, a group of 20 students from the Armenian Theological Seminary, accompanied by the dean, were attacked during their weekly march to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Three Jewish extremists, accompanied by a dog, spat at the students and shouted, “Christians must die” and “We will exterminate you from this country.” They then removed the dog’s muzzle and ordered it to bite the priest accompanying the students, while one extremist assaulted a student, breaking his hand.
Other attacks by fanatical Jewish settlers include an attempt in January 2023 to scale the walls of the Armenian Patriarchate, remove its flag bearing a distinctive cross and spray racist slogans in Hebrew vowing “revenge and death for Arabs, Armenians and Christians.” Armenian youths pursued the attackers before Israeli police intervened, beating several Armenians and arresting one. It should be noted that in two previous incidents, Armenian deacons suffered severe skull and facial injuries from assaults. Jewish extremists have also, on occasion, deliberately and openly urinated in front of the convent’s main entrance, leading to clashes with local Armenian youth.
In February 2023, three Jewish settlers stormed the Church of the Condemnation, located at the second station of the Via Dolorosa. One of them, who is Jewish American, smashed an olive wood statue of Jesus Christ with a hammer and attempted to set fire to the church. A Muslim guard employed by the church quickly subdued the vandal before further damage could occur.
Other incidents include an attempted arson on the Church of All Nations (Gethsemane) on December 4, 2020, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, and the desecration of approximately 30 gravestones in early 2023 at the historic Anglican Protestant Cemetery on Mount Zion, which opened in 1848. These attacks illustrate the ongoing hostile behavior of Jewish extremists towards Christians.
Recent reports have shown that most of these attacks occurred in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. It should be noted that many of the Jewish rioters hold dual Israeli and American citizenship.
Reports also indicate that Jewish extremists have increased their attacks on Christians in Israel and the West Bank following the armed assault by Hamas on Israeli settlements near Gaza on October 7, 2023, with extremists taking advantage of global attention on the incident. Hate crimes against Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem increased in 2025, particularly in the Armenian Quarter, according to a report by the Religious Freedom Data Center.
The annual report, by the Jerusalem-based Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, documented 111 anti-Christian incidents in 2024. An accompanying survey found that nearly half of Christians under the age of 30 want to emigrate from Israel. Among the 111 documented cases of harassment, physical assaults emerged as the most common category. Of the 47 recorded incidents, the majority targeted clergy—including monks, nuns and priests—who are often easily identifiable by their distinctive religious garb. Spitting was the most common form of physical harassment and clergy are now regularly harassed in public spaces, particularly in areas such as the Old City of Jerusalem.
Federica Sasso, one of the study’s authors, said the report “revealed a climate of hostility that represents only the tip of the iceberg of a much larger phenomenon. Many more attacks occur, but they are very difficult to monitor.” The report also noted a positive trend: Christian victims are increasingly willing to report incidents to the police. In the past, many refrained from reporting out of concern over how the police would treat them and incidents were often documented by Jewish-Israeli volunteers rather than the victims themselves.
That the Christians in Palestine and Israel are not Evangelical Protestant and are overwhelmingly Palestinian Arab, is another factor why no protest will occur and no help will come from the United States government and from the powerful Evangelical Protestant lobbies.
Again, since Armenians are regarded as the friends and allies of Palestinians and of Arabs in general, and are lumped together with them as hostile to Israel, likewise.
American Evangelical Protestants have shown as much indifference and hostility to Palestinian Christians, Armenian Christians and other Christians living in Palestine and Israel, as Israel does.
European Christians who reside in Palestine and Israel, have been subjected to the same discrimination and harrasment, and to the expropriation and vandalism of their properties, like the Palestinians and Armenians have.
Many intolerant Evangelical Protestants, regard other Christian denominations as alien (especially the Eastern Christian Churches, like the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Coptic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Churches), even heretical and one step short of paganism.
Because of the alliance of the powerful Israel and Evangelical Protestant lobbies, who are in a symbiotic relationship with each other, expecting a response from the United States government is wishful thinking. The United States government’s response, or more precisely the lack of it, to Israel’s carnage and destruction in Gaza, is a stark example of this.
For example if a small amount of non-threatening individuals decided to remain in the general area with the intentions of only involving themselves if they witnessed an unprovoked attack, and then only would they respond in a defensive matter, but being willing to use force if necessary to diffuse the situation, and to hopefully discourage future acts of a similar nature…. How do you believe enforcement respond to this type of action?