On Tuesday, 28 April a 48-year-old French Dominican nun and researcher at the École Biblique in Jerusalem was assaulted as she entered the Benedictine Abbey of the Dormition located on Mount Zion. The CCTV footage is alarming: an Israeli man suddenly appeared at high speed, violently struck her, causing her to fall to the ground, and then, after walking away, returned to kick her in the face. The nun sustained only minor physical injuries; however, the psychological impact was significant.
This incident triggered a wave of international outrage. The French Consulate General in Jerusalem vehemently condemned the attack, insisting that the assailant be held accountable. A 36-year-old suspect, who Israeli authorities have indicated suffers from mental health issues, was swiftly apprehended. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar reiterated on social media his nation’s dedication to safeguarding the freedom of religion for all faiths. Yet, such anti-Christian occurrences are not necessarily isolated as Israeli officials argue, for they have become increasingly frequent.
‘These incidents are humiliating, exhausting, and make Christians feel threatened and unwelcome in their own homes,’ the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, an interfaith peace-building organization based in Jerusalem, observes.
It reported that there has been a notable increase in violence directed at Christians in East Jerusalem and throughout Christian communities in Israel. In the year 2024, the organization recorded 111 incidents of assaults against Christians, all perpetrated by Jews.
The majority of these violent acts were aimed at international clergy and encompassed spitting, pepper-spraying, and physical assaults such as hitting. Additional forms of abuse included attacks on church properties, vandalism of Christian signs, harassment, and infringements on religious freedom, including limitations on access to places of worship.
Fr. Nikodemus, the superior of the Benedictine convent of the Dormition, marks 2023 as a significant turning point, coinciding with the entry of ministers with supremacist ideologies into the government and the trauma stemming from 7 October, which has unleashed the most extreme rhetoric. The brothers of his convent have since opted not to file a complaint:
‘I have better things to do than spend eight hours in a police station only for no action to be taken afterward,’ he lamented to the French journal Le Figaro. Some religious figures have resorted to avoiding the display of their crosses in the Old City or even circumventing the Jewish Quarter to reach the Holy Sepulchre.
‘It is not surprising that over half of the Christians residing in the Holy Land are currently contemplating departure from the area’
The Rossing Center indicated in a September 2025 survey that 19 per cent of ultra-Orthodox Jews (also known as Haredim) endorse the act of spitting on Christians, while 25 per cent of all participants questioned think that the government should promote the emigration of Arab Christians—a statistic that increases to 59 per cent among Haredim. It is not surprising that over half of the Christians residing in the Holy Land are currently contemplating departure from the area.
It certainly cannot be denied that a contributing factor to the increase in anti-Christian sentiment in the Holy Land, if not the primary cause, as reported by The Times of Israel, has been the vigorous rise of Israeli ultra-nationalism, which advocates for a theocratic Jewish state. It can be argued that just as Muslim jihadists justify their terrorism from numerous Quranic verses and the hadiths, prejudicial and violent acts carried out by Jews against Christians are arguably perpetuated by the Talmud, which exhibits disdain for Jesus Christ and His followers.
The Talmud, a Hebrew term meaning ‘learning’, is a compilation of texts that encompasses the entirety of Jewish law and tradition, assembled and refined between the third and sixth centuries AD. These writings represent the oral traditions of the Torah, specifically the Pentateuch—the initial five books of the Old Testament.
The primary text of the Talmud is the Mishnah, which is a compilation of concise teachings composed in Hebrew and edited by Rabbi Judah the Prince in the years following the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. This represents the form of Judaism that is currently practiced by Jews, in contrast to the rituals observed before and during the time of Christ. The latter emphasized the offering of the Karbanot (sacrifice) in the Temple.
The Talmud expresses nothing but scorn and hostility towards Christianity. For instance, it claims that the Blessed Mother was a prostitute who bore our Lord Jesus Christ out of wedlock, and it portrays Jesus as a magician who ‘performed sorcery…incited the masses, and subverted the masses, and caused the Jewish people to sin.’ Even more disturbingly, it describes how Jesus is punished in hell ‘with boiling excrement’.
Judaism, of course, denies Jesus as the Messiah, who, as asserted by the distinguished Professor Peter Schäfer in his book Jesus in the Talmud, was ‘rightly and legally executed because he was a Jewish heretic.’[1]
All things being equal, it is, to put it mildly, unbecoming for a group that nearly faced extinction during the Holocaust to act in a discriminatory fashion towards Christians—and not solely towards Christians. They ought to recall the contributions of Catholic priests, nuns, and laypeople in saving hundreds of thousands of Jews from the atrocities committed by the National Socialists.
Yet, similar to Christian converts from Islam in Muslim areas of Israel, Jews who embrace Christ also face the threat of rejection, social pressure, and sporadic violence from ultra-Orthodox Jews and organized anti-missionary factions.
Naturally, like Muslims who condemn terrorism, numerous Jews likewise condemn these anti-Christian acts of violence. That being said, there is a reason why they behave in such violent manner.
[1] Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 12.
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