As reported by the Religious Freedom Data Center (RFDC), 144 incidents of harassment against Christians occurred from January to September 2025. The biggest spike happened between April and June, when the Christian holiday of Easter and Jewish festival of Passover occurred simultaneously followed by Jerusalem Day, the Israeli holiday commemorating Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967—an event marked by a provocative march through the Old City where Israeli settlers chant anti-Arab slogans and wave Israeli flags. Nearly half of the attacks were recorded during those months. Overall, the majority of anti-Christian violence happens in the Old City of Jerusalem, specifically around the Armenian Patriarchate, Via Dolorosa, Jewish Quarter, and Jaffa Gate. Spitting is the most common form of violence, comprising 60 to 80 percent of attacks.1

Yisca Harani, RFDC’s director who compiled the report’s data, which is published every three months on a quarterly basis, explained that these numbers don’t necessarily reflect the reality—many attacks go unreported due to victims’ fears of filing complaints with police. Jerusalem Story spoke to Harani on the rise in anti-Christian violence in Israel, particularly in Jerusalem, and how authorities there are responding to the escalating attacks. This interview was conducted October 24, 2025 and has been edited for clarity and length.

Jerusalem Story (JS): What is the Israeli police’s response to the ongoing violence against Christians?

Yisca Harani (YH): [There’s] a lack of trust and fatigue of some Christian communities who usually are alongside [RFDC] in this fight [against violence]. [But] after a year or so, there’s no response about a case [from] the lawyers and the authorities . . . It creates a kind of a fatigue.

It’s either the police, or it is because the lawyers are not getting anywhere. Let’s say that the police did find [the perpetrator], and then we take it to the lawyers, and then it gets stuck somewhere, [for instance]. The legal system is [still] too slow in prosecuting the perpetrator.

Facing the reality now, I think that the situation is deteriorating. I cannot say that 10 percent of Israeli religious society are potential spitters. So what is the problem? The problem is that those who do those criminal things are not caught.

These perpetrators are getting the full encouragement [of their leaders], and they do it now in the light of day because they know they have the backing of their authorities.

That one [incident of] spitting is indicating not only one person; it’s indicating the kind of education that he has and the kind of discourse that the group around him has. And I have to get to that group. So these people are very visible, on the one hand, but I don’t have an approach to their circles. They’re doing the most atrocious things publicly because they know they’re safe, and they’re safe in the sense that the police don’t catch them. Or if they catch them, they close the file. Or if we have a lawyer, then I don’t know where this file disappears to or when the perpetrator is going to be indicted.

JS: What is the profile of these perpetrators? Who are their authorities?

YH: They’re always religious. I’ve not experienced one case of a secular Jew attacking [Christians]. And they’re divided into three groups: the ultra-Orthodox, the Haredi Le’umi or Nationalist Haredi in Hebrew, and National Religious [or Dati Leumi in Hebrew]. The Nationalist Haredi, dressed in black and white attire, were once not associated with Zionism. But in the last 40 years or so, they’ve joined political parties and are more prone to join the army, etc. National Religious, to put it in the most simplistic way, is the type that you see when you see settlers. They don’t have a black kippah. They have the knitted kippah.

These are the three groups. And it’s not only men. It’s men and women. And it’s not only children. It’s adults and children. This is the scope of the people who do these attacks.

When you have all these rabbinical councils all over the country, and everybody is silent and not interfering into matters that should be of concern . . . I try to connect with these councils, but because the police don’t give me the name of the perpetrators, and they don’t give me [the names of] their religious circle . . . how am I going to stop [the violence]?

How am I going to get to a situation where the rabbi of this person tells him, “This is not what we do in our religious understanding.” This is what is going eventually to stop that person, not only the fear from the police. [Because the person might harass when] there’s no policemen around. But if the rabbi says [“Don’t”], then he will not do it. It is unbelievably hard to reach the religious councils, even though they are a paid office of the state.

And then you have the police, which is run under [far-right Minister of National Security Itamar] Ben-Gvir, so when the police are called to a case [concerning violence against Christians] for them, it’s not a big deal. They’re not going to get a prize for finding a spitter . . . So show me one authority that is trying to do good for this matter. Even the mayor of Jerusalem—considered [by Israeli Jews] to be one of the best mayors Jerusalem’s had in a long time—I’ve been asking council members to bring up to him how at Jaffa Gate or in the other entries to the Old City, there is no mention of the presence of other religions. The Jewish people who come to Jerusalem, let’s say from a place where they have never seen a Christian in their lives, when they see Christians, they’re horrified. They immediately say, “Why would I see a cross when I go to sacred Jewish Jerusalem?” I said, when you enter Jaffa Gate, when you write “Happy Hannukah,” write “Happy Christmas.” You don’t want to write it, then [at least] make a kaleidoscope of the figures.

So it’s not just about getting to that perpetrator. You have to get to the circles that are around him—the religious authorities, the municipality of Jerusalem, the ministries, the police.

JS: Under Ben-Gvir’s authority, how would you describe the police response to this violence?

YH: In my perception, it’s clear that this is not an issue [for them]. I don’t think they really want to see spitters, and I don’t really think that they want to completely disregard the spitters. But it’s only when there’s world attention that the local police will understand that they have to make a big effort to find this spitter. Otherwise, they have thousands of other problems . . . It is a matter of who will tell them [to do it] from above.

There was one case of a Palestinian who spat on a soldier on a bus; that man was caught in an hour. But I have amazing photos of the spitters in the Old City, but the police don’t find them.

I see the connection with what is happening in the [occupied] West Bank. This complete disregard for horrible crimes that are done there—this penetrates into Israel. These guys that come from or are inspired by what’s going on in the West Bank, they know that they are the law, that they are the people with the upper hand, and they go with such a Jewish supremacy posture that it is impossible even to see how it is going to stop. You see it in the West Bank, and now you see it all over—the way they confront Christians. They are unstoppable, because they know that nobody’s going to stop them. They have the complete backing of the current government.