On June 2, 2025, at the end of the Jewish festival of Shavuot, a group of Israeli men was caught on surveillance camera spitting at the entrance of the Armenian Convent in Jerusalem’s Old City.1

“I confronted the extremists and told them, ‘Why are you spitting?’” Kegham Balian, a Jerusalemite Armenian writer, told Jerusalem Story.2 “Then, another car stopped by asking, ‘What’s the problem?’ I said, ‘My problem is these guys are spitting on my home.’ He said, ‘How’s that a problem?’ And he stuck his head out the car window and spat.”

While people immediately contacted the police, whose station is next to the convent, about the attack, they arrived nearly half an hour later after the perpetrators had left.3

This scene is a regular occurrence in the Old City’s Armenian Quarter, Balian said. As evident in a report released on July 2, 2025, by the Religious Freedom Data Center (RFDC), an Israeli organization documenting anti-Christian attacks, hate crimes against Christians in Jerusalem are on the rise.

The report found that 69 attacks occurred from April to June 2025—more than doubling the figure from RFDC’s last quarterly report, which was published in January 2025.4 The majority of the attacks occurred in Jerusalem’s Old City, with 44 percent happening along Via Dolorosa (a processional route in the Old City), 32 percent at the Armenian Patriarchate, and 16 percent at Jaffa Gate, with spitting being the main form of harassment.5

Yisca Harani, RFDC director who compiled the latest report, explained why the epicenters of anti-Christian violence are Via Dolorosa and the Armenian Patriarchate Street.

“It is the safest route for Jewish people to go to their holy places,” Harani told Jerusalem Story.6 “So paradoxically, because they love going through the Armenian Quarter, which is the quietest and the most welcoming, then over there, some of these radicals perform whatever they perform vis-à-vis the Armenians.”

Harani noted, however, that RFDC’s report is limited in information because her organization has a small number of volunteers who document violence, and many Christians don’t want to report attacks.

“It is not a phenomenon that is decreasing, but rather increasing,” Harani said. “Whatever the official number in the report, we know that it is far greater.”

Violence against Christians has been escalating in recent years, with the election of Jewish supremacists to Israel’s parliament and Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza diverting international attention. In addition to attacks in the Old City, Christians elsewhere in Palestine are not immune. On July 17, 2025, an Israeli strike hit Gaza’s sole Catholic church, killing three people,7 while settlers have been rampaging Taybeh, the only majority Christian village in the occupied West Bank.8

“The ensuing chaos of the situation over here is fertile ground for the expansion of hatred,” Balian said. “People are being emboldened; the National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is giving a carte blanche to the extremists.” Ben-Gvir has in the past proclaimed that spitting on Christian sites is “an ancient Jewish custom . . . Why turn this into a criminal matter?”9

Harani emphasized that for years, the Israeli state has promoted an “us-versus-them” mentality, paving the way for provocations.

“There’s a problem with how education was shaped in the last decade,” Harani said. “That we [Israeli Jews] should know nothing about Christianity. The only things we should know is indeed the very bloody history that Christianity imposed on us . . . and that couples with the general agenda of the governments of the last 20 years, that if you want to be loyal to the state, you should identify with your Jewishness, and identifying with your Jewishness is excluding anyone else.”

After the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, a sense of anger and vengeance further inflamed these government-spurred ethnic tensions.

“Since the war, Christians are coupled with all the world that wants to annihilate us, that is anti-Semitic to us,” Harani said.

Yet Harani advocates for undoing this supremacist indoctrination:

Harani believes that education is one part of a two-pronged solution in tackling anti-Christian hate among Israelis. The other part is the response of law enforcement.

“When we file complaints with the police, most of the complaints are closed,” Harani said. “I know the police is overwhelmed with lots of work, but when there was a Palestinian spitting at the soldier in the bus, he was caught in no time.”

Some progress, however, is being made despite the political climate, Harani noted. On May 2, 2025, Israel’s parliament held a discussion on the harassment of Christians—the first time such an initiative took place in Israel’s history. On May 22, 2025, the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) held a follow-up session, where police were questioned on their handling of the harassment. During the meeting, a police representative said the average number of indictments for attacks against Christians is between one to three annually.10 The next session will be a tour of the Old City to meet the victims of such attacks, with participation from members of the Israeli State Attorney’s Office’s Legal Counsel and Legislation Department and Jerusalem Municipality.

“I’m now in a position where if I go to the police . . . They do not ignore me,” Harani said, comparing the drastic change in attitude from when she first launched RFDC in 2023. “We are in a different position, but with the current government, with the current situation, we will have to have pressure from outside.”

But Balian cautions pinning the blame on simply the lawmakers in charge now.

“This didn’t start only when this extremist government was installed,” Balian said. “This started way before . . . But it’s been amplified.”

Even with the unprecedented Knesset hearings, Balian is skeptical, though, that change is coming.

“Over the years we’ve had incidents, like I’ve had friends pepper sprayed, friends nearly stabbed, harassed, gotten into fights. And every time there’s an arrest or a detainment, there’s no follow-up. More often than not [the perpetrators are] let go without any repercussions,” Balian told Jerusalem Story.

“Strict policies and measures have to be put in place in order to protect the Christian presence in Jerusalem,” Balian added. “If Israel purports to be a democratic state with freedom of religion, it should enforce that stance, not just have it in theory.”