‘They are trying to make it unbearable’: Jerusalem Christians face Easter under Israeli crackdown
"Religious intolerance and antichristian sentiment has been made mainstream by Israeli political leadership – the ultra-hardline national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, described Israelis spitting on Christians as “an old Jewish tradition” – and old suspicions have escalated into brazen, all-out violence. There have also been growing incidences of settler groups attempting to seize Christian land in Jerusalem. In 2023, the Holy Land Roman Catholic patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa accused the government of establishing a “cultural and political atmosphere that can justify, or tolerate, actions against Christians”.
A recent report by the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue documented the steep rise in the scale and severity of attacks on Christians in Jerusalem and across Israel in 2024, ranging from spitting at priests and public hate speech to the desecration of graves, arson attacks and vandalising of churches.
“It’s usually young Israeli Jewish men who are conducting these attacks with impunity. They face very little punishment, if the police get involved at all,” said John Munayer, the director of international engagement at the Rossing Center.
“It’s a clear attempt by hardcore settler Zionists to Judaise the Old City of Jersualem and trying to make it unbearable for Christians who have been there for centuries.”
As he attended the Easter prayer ceremony on Thursday, Father Nikon Golovko, the deputy head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, said he had “really seen things change for the worse for Christians in the past nine years”.
He said: “We receive a lot more hostility and even aggression from the Jewish community. They spit on priests, even when we are walking through the Christian quarter. It sends a message that the city belongs not to all communities but only to the Jews. It was not like this before.”
After an incident in which Orthodox Jews were caught on video spitting at Christians, Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that Israel was “totally committed to safeguard the sacred right of worship and pilgrimage to the holy sites of all faiths”.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen and
Quique Kierszenbaum in Jerusalem
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/18/jerusalem-christians-easter-israeli-crackdown-church-holy-sepulchre
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