The Religious Data Freedom Center monitors violence against Christians in Israel. As explained in its quarterly report, “The Center collects data and documents anti-Christian incidents through a ‘hotline,’ operated by Israeli volunteers and activists. The Center is operated and funded by private citizens and is not affiliated with any governmental or political body.”
Most of the violence documented is perpetrated by religious Orthodox Jews targeting international clergy or individuals with clearly identifiable symbols of Christianity on their person. It has included spitting, pepper-spraying, and hitting—all types of physical assault. Other instances of abuse include attacks on church properties, defacement of Christian signs, harassment, and violations of freedom of religion, such as restricting access to religious sites. In the third quarter of 2025, a new phenomenon emerged of overt incitement on social media. The center states, “This incitement, which occurs without fear of personal identification by the perpetrators, indicates a strengthening of self-confidence among those working to marginalize Christians.”1
In the United States, these actions, particularly those committed against individuals, would likely be classified as hate crimes. According to the American Civil Liberties Union:
“[A hate crime] is more than an assault on the victim’s physical well-being. It is an assault on the victim’s essential human worth. A person who has been singled out for victimization based on some group characteristic—such as race, religion, or national origin—has, by that very act, been deprived of the right to participate in the life of the community on an equal footing for reasons that have nothing to do with what the victim did but everything to do with who the victim is.”2
In Israel, according to the Religious Freedom Data Center, it’s challenging to get police to even pay any heed—if such acts are even reported. They write:
“It is almost inconceivable that close to 90% of the incidents would not have come to the attention of the public or the authorities without the involvement of the Hotline. Victims do not turn to the police due to fear of filing a complaint, concerns about prolonged waiting during questioning, translation difficulties, lack of trust in the authorities, and a sense of futility regarding the process, among other reasons. Most of the cases opened in the past six months were thanks to the encouragement and mediation of Hotline volunteers.3”
As noted by the center itself, these attacks are being committed within a broader political context of a government that actively promotes and endorses Jewish supremacy. They write, at midyear: “We identify a connection between the national mood, the prevailing tensions, and the government’s backing, which together foster a sense of superiority among some Jews—a factor contributing to the rise in attacks against non-Jews in the city’s streets.”4 And of course, these actions were committed amid an ongoing genocide by Israel in Gaza and state-sanctioned violent ethnic cleansing throughout much of the West Bank, sending a clear signal that “anything goes” in the state that most major human rights countries have identified as an apartheid state.