The Holy Land’s Silent Crisis: Unpunished Crimes Against Christians in Israel

The Holy Land’s Silent Crisis: Unpunished Crimes Against Christians in Israel

 

How violence against Armenians and other Christians exposes a double standard in global media and diplomacy

 

By Samantha Krause

 

In Jerusalem, the city of three faiths, the cross has become a target. From the narrow alleys of the Armenian Quarter to the ancient walls of the Dormition Abbey, attacks on Christians in Israel and the occupied territories have reached an alarming level. Human rights monitors, Christian leaders, and journalists have documented a pattern of hate crimes and intimidation that has escalated sharply since the rise of Israel’s most right-wing government in history.

 

According to the Jerusalem-based Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, there were 111 recorded attacks on Christians in 2024 alone, including assaults on clergy, desecration of churches, and vandalism of cemeteries. Most of the perpetrators were young ultra-Orthodox and religious-nationalist Jews, often acting with what observers describe as “a sense of impunity.”

 

A Campaign of Harassment and Desecration

 

The forms of violence vary but share a clear pattern. Christian clergy are routinely spat on in public. In Jerusalem’s Old City, priests walking the Via Dolorosa are cursed and pepper-sprayed by extremists. In February 2023, Jewish vandals entered the Church of the Condemnation, smashing an olive-wood statue of Jesus and attempting to set the church on fire before being subdued by a Muslim guard. The same year, thirty Christian graves were desecrated in the historic Anglican Cemetery on Mount Zion.

 

The Armenian community of Jerusalem has become a particular target. On June 3, 2025, Israeli settlers attacked the Armenian Convent in the Old City, spitting on crosses and icons while police, stationed only a minute away, arrived 25 minutes after the attackers fled. In previous years, Armenian priests have been assaulted, their hands broken, and their churches defaced with graffiti calling for “revenge and death for Arabs, Armenians, and Christians.”

 

In one widely reported 2019 attack, twenty students from the Armenian Theological Seminary were harassed by three extremists shouting “Christians must die.” One student suffered a broken hand; the attackers released their dog on a priest. According to Armenia Weekly, these incidents are not isolated but part of an entrenched phenomenon of “price tag” terrorism — attacks meant to punish Christian or Arab presence in contested spaces.

 

Law, Policy, and Indifference

 

Critics argue that Israeli law enforcement and political leadership have failed to protect Christian minorities, sending a dangerous signal to extremists. Clergy and human rights groups allege that police often dismiss cases as random acts or the work of the mentally ill. Very few offenders face trial.

 

Vatican News, citing the Rossing Center report, noted that the growth of religious-nationalist extremism and the 2018 “Nation-State Law” — which defines Israel as the state of the Jewish people alone — has entrenched a hierarchy of citizenship and emboldened sectarian actors. The law effectively downgraded the status of non-Jewish communities, eroding protections once guaranteed under the 1992 “Human Dignity and Liberty” statute.

 

The same report identified systemic discrimination in property and tax policy. Churches face mounting legal battles over alleged debts, and the Jerusalem Municipality has repeatedly threatened to seize land owned by the Armenian Patriarchate and other denominations. In 2025, church leaders petitioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the city from taxing church properties, calling the policy a form of economic harassment aimed at reducing the Christian footprint in Jerusalem.

 

“We Feel Abandoned”

 

Father Gevorg Hayrapetyan, a deacon of the Armenian Patriarchate, has endured spitting, curses, and physical assaults. “When they touch your faith, which is precious for you, you don’t know what to do,” he told Jerusalem Story. “They know that in the eyes of the law, they are protected.”

 

According to the Rossing Center’s December 2024 survey, 48 percent of Christian youth under 30 in Israel and East Jerusalem are considering emigration, citing fear, discrimination, and violence. In Jerusalem, that number rises even higher. “The extremism, the polarization, the negative attitude or ignoring of minorities is getting more difficult,” said Rossing Center project director Hannah Bendcowsky.

 

Jerusalem’s Christian population has dropped to less than 1 percent of the city’s residents, compared to 25 percent a century ago. Many are Armenians and Palestinians who trace their roots in the city back millennia. Their departure signals what human rights experts describe as “the slow erasure of Christianity from the Holy Land.”

 

A Double Standard of Silence

 

If Christian monuments were being torched by Muslims or Arabs, global media and Western governments would likely erupt in outrage. Yet when Jewish extremists desecrate churches, vandalize crosses, or attack clergy, the response is muted. Western headlines rarely appear, and diplomatic protests are nearly nonexistent.

 

This silence has not gone unnoticed. Armenian and Palestinian Christian leaders say the international community applies a double standard, choosing political convenience over moral consistency. “If these attacks were committed anywhere else, they would be labeled terrorism,” said one Jerusalem pastor who asked to remain anonymous. “But because the perpetrators are Jewish and the victims are Christian, the world looks away.”

 

Beyond the Holy Land

 

The erosion of Christian presence in Israel and the occupied territories is not just a local tragedy. It undermines Jerusalem’s identity as a city of faith and coexistence. The Rossing Center’s findings reveal a pattern of systemic marginalization, emboldened by rhetoric from Israel’s far-right ministers who openly call for expanding Jewish control over East Jerusalem.

 

Armenians, who have lived in Jerusalem since the 4th century, now find themselves cornered by settler expansion, police indifference, and mob violence. Their convents and seminaries, once centers of spiritual learning, are under siege from both real estate developers and hate-fueled nationalists.

 

The Moral Reckoning

 

Christianity’s roots in Jerusalem run deeper than any modern state. Yet two millennia after Christ’s crucifixion, the followers of his faith in the Holy Land are spat on, beaten, and forced out — and the world barely notices.

 

The hypocrisy is glaring. Western governments that rush to defend religious freedom elsewhere remain silent when Israel’s extremists target Christians. International media that devote weeks of coverage to vandalized synagogues in Europe or anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States ignore the daily persecution of priests in the streets of Jerusalem.

 

A truly democratic nation cannot claim moral authority while tolerating violence against its smallest and oldest religious community. Until there is accountability, the cross in Jerusalem will remain not only a symbol of faith but also of abandonment.

 

Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jews spit on Christians and churches

 

 

Sources

 

• Armenia Weekly, “Violence against Christians is on the rise in Israel,” by Gaby Kevorkian, September 11, 2025.
• Jerusalem Story, “Jewish Violence against Christians on the Rise in Jerusalem,” by Jessica Buxbaum, April 11, 2025.
• Vatican News, “Rossing Center presents report on life of Christians in the Holy Land,” by Roberto Cetera, March 2025.
• Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, Annual Report on Attacks on Christians in Israel and East Jerusalem, 2024.
• Statements by Father Gevorg Hayrapetyan, Dr. Mitri Raheb, and Hannah Bendcowsky, Jerusalem press conference, March 27, 2025.