‘Some hide their crosses’: Jerusalem nun attack highlights Israel’s growing anti-Christian problem

On Wednesday evening, Yisca Harani spent several hours at a local police station.

“I got a report about a ‘spitter’,” the Jewish activist said over a patchy phone line from Jerusalem, explaining that a Christian monk had been the latest target of such humiliation.

Harani, who heads the Religious Freedom Data Center (RFDC) – an Israeli NGO that documents anti-Christian incidents and help victims report them to authorities – said there are so many cases now that she and her roughly 100 volunteers are kept busy “24/7”.

“The most common is spitting,” she said. “But it can also be graffiti on [Christian] signs with crosses on them, vandalism or different forms of harassment.”

The perpetrators, she said, belong to a very tiny part of Israel’s population of 10 million – “most Jews would never do this” – and mainly identify as ultra-Orthodox, Shas-style Sephardis or nationalist religious Jews.

“They all wear kippah [traditional Jewish skullcaps]. I’ve not seen one secular Jew misbehave toward Christians.”

In 2024, her organisation recorded 107 incidents. Last year, the number jumped to 181.

“There isn’t a month that goes by without at least ten incidents reported,” she said, but noted that in reality, the numbers are likely much higher. This is in part because victims either do not know how to report, or do not want to “make a fuss” over less serious offences like spitting.

Why the spitting?

The question of spitting takes us centuries back through the history of Jewish-Christian relations, throughout which Jews, as a minority, suffered immensely at the hands of a Christian majority – from anti-Semitism and persecution to attempts at extermination.

In the 11^th century, Jews (then being persecuted during the Crusades) were accused of spitting at the cross in an act of religious contempt, Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein explained in a Times of Israel blog post. Some Jewish communities then adopted this gesture to show resistance and defiance. Over time, “the spitting Jew” became a negative stereotype for Jews.

When the state of Israel was created in 1948, Jews became a majority group for the first time, with Christians in the minority, and the spitting became even more symbolic.

Goshen-Gottstein wrote that the problem is that some insular Jewish communities have not followed modern developments in the Christian world, and do not know that many churches have since revised their theologies, legitimised Judaism, issued apologies and are even fighting anti-Semitism.

“The spitters and attackers are, of course, clueless,” Goshen-Gottstein said.

Far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir added fuel to the fire in 2023, when he, as Israel’s sitting national security minister, told Army Radio that spitting at Christians was not a crime, and that not everything “justifies an arrest”.

‘Think twice about going out’

The brutal physical assault of a French Dominican nun in East Jerusalem on April 28, however, sent new shock waves throughout the Christian community. In CCTV footage capturing the attack, an Orthodox man is seen running up behind a Christian nun, shoving her to the ground, and returning to kick her once before bystanders intervene.

Watch more Anti-Christian aggression on the rise in Jerusalem

“This is the most extreme case we’ve seen. During the three years since I founded RFDC, there may have been three or four physical interactions,” Harani said, but stressed that none of them had been this violent.

Since then, her NGO has been called upon to “escort” Christians through Jerusalem. While accompanying the faithful, the RFDC volunteers keep their phone cameras open at all times, ready to film any potential assaults they may be targeted by.

On Wednesday, the Knesset held a special committee session on the attack against the nun and the way Christians are being treated. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu firmly condemned the incident, but critics say the meeting was mainly called because the footage went viral, embarrassing the Israeli government on the international stage.

Several of the Christian representatives present at the hearing recounted routine harassment on the streets of Jerusalem’s Old City, the Haaretz newspaper reported, and cited incidents in which Israeli security forces had prevented devotees access to prayer sites or in which Christians had been the victims of stone-throwing or kicking.

"I call on the Israeli government to call these acts by their name: hate crimes," Father Aghan Gogchian, the chancellor of the Armenian Patriarchate, said.

Neighbours staging protests

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, some 185,000 Christians were registered in Israel at the end of 2025, accounting for about 1.9 percent of the population. Most of these are Arab Christians – a minority that is often overlooked, rarely talked about and whose Arabic heritage makes them especially vulnerable in a Jewish state like Israel.

Hana Bendcowsky, program director of the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations at the interreligious Rossing Center, said there had been incidents where local demonstrations had been staged in front of Arab Christian homes because their Jewish neighbours did not want them living there.

“Maybe because they are Christian, maybe because they are Arabs. It is not clear.”

Another group that is regularly targeted are those who wear visible Christian symbols or religious clothing, such as pilgrims, nuns and monks.

 “Every priest you talk to will tell you that spitting is almost a daily experience,” Bendcowsky said.

Some, especially after the attack on the nun, have therefore become more careful in showing their religious affiliations.

“They hide their crosses in their pockets and so on, or avoid wearing their habits when they go to certain places.”

Father David Neuhaus SJ, who has lived in Jerusalem for almost five decades and for several years served as superior of the Jesuit community at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, said that after the assault on the nun “there are people who think twice before going out unless it is absolutely necessary”.

Although he refuses to give in to the fear himself, he said: “There is now an awareness that you need to look around you, think about where you are going, think about how you dress. There is a feeling that at any moment your life could suddenly take a turn for the worse.”

‘To be Israeli is to be Jewish’

All three interviewees FRANCE 24 spoke to said the intolerance against non-Jews in Israel – whether Christians, Muslims or others – has spiked in recent years, fuelled by new government policies, war, and of course, the October 7, 2023 terror attacks.

Father Neuhaus said it did not help that Israel has been an extremely militarised state from the start and has been “built on settler colonialism”.

“We’re a very violent society,” he said. “Take a bus, take a train, walk down the street – everyone is armed. That already is an incredible violence.”

Harani, of RFDC, said the 2018 “Nation-State Law” marked the real first turn for the worse in Israel’s religious intolerance.

“This law is the epitome of this whole psychosis: that to be Israeli is to be Jewish – religiously and nationalistically.”

The law defined Israel as national home of the Jewish people and encouraged the use of Jewish symbols in Israeli society. Critics say this quickly forged a climate of religious nationalism and contributed to religious minorities feeling increasingly marginalised.

Since then, Harani said Netanyahu’s government shows “absolute disregard for certain behaviours in the radical sector. Their behavior is tolerated, and therefore gives them the green light. It’s passive encouragement.”

And, she said, “they [the perpetrators] are becoming more and more audacious”.

Father Neuhaus agreed. “When lower-level incidents like spitting are ignored, the message is that violence is OK.”

The trauma, anger and frustration linked to the October 7 attacks led some insular Jewish groups to start “dehumanising the other”, Bendcowsky said. She pointed particularly to the uptick in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. She noted that many of them are either in denial of, or have no knowledge of, the death and pain Israel has brought to civilians in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.

Watch moreSettler violence surges in the West Bank

“So what we see with Christians is just one symptom of the general atmosphere,” she said.

However terrible the aggression on the nun might have been, Harani said it did serve at least one meaningful purpose: shining a light on the Israeli government’s treatment of Christians.  

“I’m in almost daily contact with the nun and visited her yesterday,” Harani said. “I told her: ‘In a way, you were chosen to be the stop sign for what is happening’.”

FRANCE 24’s correspondent in Jerusalem Noga Tarnopolsky contributed to this report.