Anti-Christian attacks in Israel increased last year: report

JERUSALEM (LifeSiteNews) — Christians in Jerusalem and across Israel faced increased harassment and violence in 2025, according to a new report about recent incidents documented in the Old City.

On April 1, a new annual study released by the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue highlighted a continued pattern of harassment and violence against Christian communities in Israel and East Jerusalem in 2025, including 155 recorded cases ranging from physical assaults to vandalism and intimidation.

These cases were attributed to a combination of social tensions, religious-nationalist dynamics, and the broader context of regional conflict, with incidents occurring in public spaces such as the Old City of Jerusalem and affecting mainly clergy, church properties, and religious symbols.

“As in 2024, the majority of physical attacks targeted clergy—monks, nuns, friars, and priests,” the Rossing Center report states, adding that “spitting continued to be the most common expression of hostility” and that such acts are now often carried out openly, sometimes in front of police or passersby.

The Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue is an Israeli organization dedicated to promoting peaceful coexistence among Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the Holy Land.

The report documented 61 physical attacks, 52 cases of property damage against church institutions, 28 episodes of harassment, and 14 incidents of defacement of Christian-related public signs. The data exclude the West Bank and reflect what the center describes as a “persistent and worrying pattern in which both overt violence and everyday humiliations accumulate into a broader atmosphere of exclusion,” particularly in areas of Jerusalem.

Incidents described in Jerusalem’s Old City included episodes in which groups of young people harassed clergy in visible religious dress, including spitting and verbal insults in crowded areas.

According to a priest cited in an Avvenire report by Nello Scavo, the phenomenon has become predictable in certain periods of heightened national sentiment. The same reports also refer to damage and desecration of religious objects, including a statue of the Virgin Mary at a Franciscan site associated with the Custody of the Holy Land.

READ: Israel’s expulsion of Catholic priest from occupied Palestine sparks outrage

“A few days ago, a nun was shoved and kicked in the Holy City. Shortly before, images had emerged of Israeli soldiers committing acts of profanation in Lebanon. And yesterday, a group of about thirty young people gathered at the entrance of the Convent of the Custody of the Holy Land and covered the statue of the Virgin with spit,” the report dated May 17, 2026, reads.

Orthodox priest Nikon Golovko described spitting as a symbolic act of exclusion, stating: “It is a message: the City does not belong to everyone.”

“Skinny, angry boys move in packs, pouring out of hundreds of buses coming from lands taken from the Palestinians. The flags they carry are symbols — but the poles holding them are sticks. In the Christian Quarter they kick at doors until they find what they’re looking for. They spot a man with thinning white hair, a dark habit, and a white cord from which a cross hangs. They walk past him, surround him, mock him, and spit on the ground so that it splashes onto the dark cloth covering the friar’s sandals. It is an ordinary practice, almost never reported to the authorities,” the Italian report says.

According to data from the Rossing Center, many Israeli Jews increasingly view Christianity as something dangerous and best kept at a distance.

Nearly half of those surveyed believe that “entering a Christian church is not kosher,” meaning it is forbidden by religious law and contrary to God’s will; a similar proportion considers Christianity an “idolatrous religion.” Among the ultra‑Orthodox Haredim — the most stringent and insular branch of contemporary Judaism, marked by a strict, literal adherence to Jewish religious laws and a lifestyle deliberately separated from the secular world — these figures rise to 96 and 79 percent, respectively.

Rejection of Christian teaching in Israeli schools is growing: 55 percent of Jewish respondents oppose including Christianity and its texts in the curriculum, and 74 percent explicitly reject study of the New Testament. At the same time, more and more local Christians are considering leaving the country: 36 percent are weighing emigration, and among younger people the share rises to over 50 percent.