Because religious Zionism dominates key institutions of the Israeli state, the police and courts fail to hold their followers accountable for attacks on Christian communities.
The frequency and intensity of hate crimes and terrorist attacks against Palestinian Christians – including against pilgrims, believers, clergy, nuns, Christian property, holy sites and religious symbols – carried out by Israeli extremists is steadily increasing.
These attacks are not isolated or spontaneous incidents, as Israel claims to avoid accountability as a government and a state. They are premeditated crimes committed by individuals and groups, including members of the police and military, who draw their ideological framework from extremist religious Zionist doctrine. In particular, the Hardal (Haredi Leumi, or nationalist Haredi) movement, an ultra-Orthodox nationalist movement whose leading figures are part of the current governing coalition led by Bezalel Smotrich. This ideology has both historical and biblical roots.
These crimes include verbal abuse; spitting on worshippers, holy sites and their entrances; physical violence; storming and damaging or desecrating holy sites and cemeteries; destroying statues, tombstones and graves; writing racist slogans; throwing stones; theft, looting and arson of property; and occupying buildings and converting them for other purposes.
These attacks are carried out in all areas under Israeli control, but are particularly concentrated in the Old City and its neighborhoods of Jerusalem, especially the Via Dolorosa and the Armenian Quarter. They also affect other Christian cities in the West Bank, Palestinian communities within the 1948 borders, and Gaza.
The scale and geographical scope of these attacks have expanded, as was recently seen in southern Lebanon, where in April 2026 an Israeli soldier beheaded a statue of Christ, and another soldier desecrated a statue of Mary by placing a cigarette in its mouth.
In between these two incidents, on April 28, 2026, a nun in Jerusalem was violently attacked by an extremist who deliberately pushed her from behind, causing her to fall on her face. Not content with an act that nearly cost him his life, he returned while the nun lay wounded and kicked her repeatedly, with the clear intent of causing further harm.
Recent years have seen an escalation in the targeting of the Palestinian Christian presence. According to a report by the Supreme Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine, 157 attacks were carried out between 2018 and 2023. In 2025 alone, more than 130 attacks occurred, while 14 were documented in the first two months of 2026.
These crimes also targeted Palestinian Christians living in the 1948 territories and their holy sites. These included a series of attacks on the Church of St. Elijah in Haifa between June and August 2023, which included several repeated attacks by followers of Religious Zionism. In August 2023, the Latin Monastery of the Archangel Gabriel in al-Mujaidl was also attacked and stoned.
In 1948 and the following years, many towns with Christian or mixed populations were depopulated or completely destroyed. In some cases, churches remained standing and limited permission was given for religious ceremonies and burials, while in other towns this was denied.
It was not until 2026 that the residents of al-Bassa were able to win the right to pray in the town's two churches. However, in the devastated village of Ma'lul, residents were denied access to the cemetery after it was fenced off and declared closed within a military zone. Only after a long legal battle did the military authorities allow visits to some graves, in very rare and highly restricted cases.
Gazans were not spared either. The report of the Higher Presidential Committee documented several incidents in 2023, most notably the targeting of the al-Ahli al-Arabi Baptist Hospital on 17 October 2023, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 500 Palestinians. On 16 December 2023, snipers shot dead a woman and her daughter in the Holy Family Catholic Church.
The ideology of superiority
The escalation of individual and collective religious Zionist terror was fueled by the rise of the movement's leading figures to central positions and ministerial posts within the current Israeli government.
The religious Zionist worldview combines historical theological hostility with modern nationalist politics, in which Christianity and its history are treated as enemies of the Jewish people. This hostility is reflected in the ideology of the movement's leaders, most notably Smotrich, the leader of the Religious Zionist Party (formerly the National Union-Tkuma party). It is considered the most radical trend within religious Zionism, ideologically rigid in both its Zionist and religious dimensions.
Smotrich serves as Minister of Finance and Minister of Defense for Civil Administration in the West Bank. He and his movement promote an ideology that combines Jewish religious supremacy with an absolute rejection of Christian influence in the so-called „Greater Land of Israel,” refusing to cede any part of it. The movement seeks to transform Israel into a state governed by „Torah law”—a halachic, or theocratic, state.
According to this idea, non-Jews are not given equal rights, but are instead relegated to the status of "alien residents," which presupposes the recognition of absolute Jewish sovereignty.
Smotrich's party takes a hard-line stance on Christian activity in Jerusalem and Israel, opposing what he calls "missionary work." While he accepts financial and political support for evangelical groups, he insists that this support must be handled with caution and must not be allowed to spread evangelical beliefs.
Within this framework, hostility towards Christian symbols and Christian presence is both emphasized and justified. By eliminating Christian religious and ecclesiastical presence, the conflict can be reframed in the West as one that is exclusively with Islam, thereby reinforcing anti-Muslim hostility and Islamophobia.
This movement increasingly dominates the security apparatus – including the police, the Israeli Border Police and the prison service – all of which are under the direct control of Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of the extremist Jewish Force (Otzma Yehudit) party and an ally of Smotrich.
Above the law
The Zionist extremist understands that by committing crimes against Christians and their symbols in Israeli-controlled territories, he will likely not face legal accountability.
It sees itself as above the law, if not the law itself. Even if charges are brought, the incident is treated as an isolated case, separated from the broader context of extremist religious Zionist ideology. It is not classified as terrorism or a hate crime.
Israeli laws, if enforced by the police and prosecution, allow for severe penalties for religiously motivated hate crimes. The 2016 Anti-Terrorism Law defines crimes committed on religious grounds or against houses of worship, cemeteries, and holy sites as acts of terrorism and stipulates that hate crimes are punishable by double the standard penalty.
The definition of hate crime in the Criminal Code also includes attacks against the human body, freedom or property committed with racist motives or out of hostility towards a religious group, also providing for increased penalties.
The law also includes a whole section on crimes against the religious feelings of a community, including the desecration or destruction of a place of worship, religious building or sacred image, as well as the intentional disruption of religious rituals or attacks on cemeteries. These crimes are punishable by imprisonment of one to three years. Unfortunately, such penalties are not applied to the frequent attacks on Christian holy sites.
Spitting is also classified as a form of assault under Israeli law, with penalties doubled if it is religiously motivated. The Religious Freedom Data Center documented 110 assault incidents in the first half of 2025 alone, including 83 cases of spitting.
It is worth recalling that the Israeli prosecution previously used hate-motivated and racially motivated assault charges against Palestinians during the May 2021 uprising. 85 percent of the defendants were Arab. Racist-motivated terrorism charges were brought against 95 defendants, 87 percent of whom were Arab, while racist motives were found in 50 defendants, 70 percent of whom were Arab.
However, authorities do not prosecute Jewish extremists from settler groups who attack Christians and their holy sites in Jerusalem, the West Bank and elsewhere – despite the fact that surveillance cameras cover almost every alley in Jerusalem, making it entirely possible to identify the perpetrators.
The police are also failing to comply with their legal obligation to initiate criminal proceedings as soon as they become aware of a crime. Under the law, no formal complaint is required for the police to take action. Yet they are failing to do so, and attacks on Christians and their holy sites continue to escalate.
Double standards
The soldier who attacked the statue of Christ could have been tried under military law on charges of terrorism or hate crime, with the appropriate penalties. He could also have been charged with „dishonorable conduct,” which could carry a prison sentence of up to a year.
Instead, the military treated the offense with extreme lenience, and no punishment would likely have been imposed had it not been for the media outcry. The soldier was sentenced to 30 days in military detention—a disciplinary punishment less severe than actual imprisonment. As for the six other soldiers who witnessed the incident, they were merely ordered to „debrief,” even though they could have been treated as accomplices by their silence.
The state and its institutions – above all the police, which reports directly to Ben Gvir – apply two different standards to Israeli extremists and Palestinians.
While the Latin Patriarch was prevented from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday, and restrictions were imposed on the faithful under the pretext of a „state of emergency” – while Muslim believers were also barred from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque – Ben Gvir himself was allowed during the same period, in April 2026, to storm the courtyards of Al-Aqsa under heavy police protection, despite the declared state of emergency.
The violations committed by the Israeli state and its institutions against Christians, their property, and their holy sites, as documented in the report of the Supreme Presidential Committee, include the freezing of accounts, as was done against the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and the heavy taxes imposed on church properties in August 2025.
Previously, in February 2025, properties owned by the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem were seized.
Violations have also occurred through settler expansion and encroachment on church lands, as seen in the Orthodox Church around the Monastery of St. Gerasimos (Deir Hajla) near Jericho, where new outposts have been established. This poses a direct threat to the historical and religious character of the region and the Christian presence in the country, and is part of a broader plan to eradicate Palestine’s Christian and historical identity.
Following the destruction of the statue of Christ in southern Lebanon, the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land issued a statement calling for swift and decisive action to ensure accountability. However, instead of a severe punishment commensurate with the crime, a lenient sentence was imposed.
When Israel was internationally shamed by the spread of the video documenting the crime, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced the appointment of a „special envoy to the Christian world” in April 2026, choosing a Palestinian Christian from Jaffa for the post. However, the church did not issue a statement welcoming the appointment, which essentially amounted to a policy of silence and disregard.
The government's decision appears to be a cosmetic attempt to cover up a policy operating according to double standards.
Externally, Israel seeks to portray itself as a religiously tolerant state that seeks to deepen ties with the Christian world and expand religious Zionist propaganda internationally. Internally, however, it neither punishes nor deters extremists, allowing hate crimes, attacks on holy sites, and the desecration of Christian religious symbols to continue unchecked.
