A recent report has warned that hostility towards Christians is on the rise in Israel, with the blame being placed on a surge within the variety of attacks on believers and church properties and a growing atmosphere of nationalism.
‘Attacks on Christians in Israel and East Jerusalem’, a report from the Jerusalem-based Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, said that Christian leaders and experts on Christianity in Israel have warned that there’s an increasing feeling of insecurity amongst Christians within the Holy Land that reflects a wider social and political trend, Christian Daily International reports.
“While hostility towards the Christian presence has been a longstanding occurrence in some local communities, it has now escalated to a broader and more severe phenomenon,” the report said.
“As the Cardinal of Jerusalem, Pier Battista Pizzaballa, said regarding the spike in attacks, ‘These people [the attackers] feel they’re protected…that the cultural and political atmosphere now can justify, or tolerate, actions against Christians’.”
According to the information collected within the report, Christian communities saw a big increase in each the frequency and intensity of harassment in 2023, starting from physical attacks on church property and individual Christians, to cases of verbal harassment, cemetery desecration, and instances of spitting on or within the direction of clergy and pilgrims.
“Spitting has been a known occurrence in religious life in Jerusalem for a long time, but it surely has transformed from a covert act to perpetrators openly spitting at clergy, holy places, and even pilgrims, in broad daylight, before crowds and within the presence of security cameras,” the report noted.
While spitting is taken into account a felony in Israel, with more severe penalties, including as much as ten years in prison, if done for a racial or religious reason, victims are sometimes unaware of the law and reluctant to report it. When they do, it’s common for them to dismiss most reports as non-violent and irrelevant.
Other types of assault have also turn out to be more common, including using pepper spray, and are sometimes directed against those suspected of missionary work and attempting to convert Jews to Christianity. There is particular hostility directed towards evangelism by Orthodox Jews, with quite a few accounts of harassment and intimidation against Christian staff which have led to attacks or ostracism from the community.
However, the report also notes that missionary activity will not be illegal in Israel, saying that, “It is usually wrongly believed that the practice is outlawed in Israel, while the one restrictions declare that it is prohibited to proselytize to an individual younger than 18 without the consent of each parents and to supply material profit to potential converts while proselytizing.”
Some Christian communities based near or in Jewish neighbourhoods, comparable to the Armenians within the Old City of Jerusalem, have experienced repeated attacks within the last the 12 months.
“Based on compiled records of known attacks in previous years, 2023 also witnessed a notable increase in each severe property and physical assaults,” the report said.
“The Polish monastery bordering Mea Shearim experienced various types of harassment over several months…the abuses ceased only after the community began reporting to the Religious Freedom Data Center hotline…Nevertheless, instances of spitting, verbal harassment, and the throwing of objects and garbage into the compound from a close-by constructing endured.”
Christians are a minority group in Israel, making up just 1.9 per cent of the population, and three-quarters of those Christians come from Israel’s Arab population.
