Anti-Christian Hate in Israel Doubles to 107 Incidents in 2026

Anti-Christian attacks in Jerusalem have more than doubled to 107 incidents in the first half of 2026, straining Israel's bond with its staunchest US allies.

Anti-Christian hate in Jerusalem has become routine, with 107 incidents registered in the first half of 2026 — more than double the figure for the same period in 2024 — as young Israelis increasingly treat spitting on Christians as a religious duty.

"Anyone who is visibly a Christian is becoming a target," said Yisca Harani, an Israeli scholar who founded the Religious Freedom Data Center that tracks the attacks.

At least 12 spitting incidents occurred near the Armenian Apostolic Church alone during the May 14 Jerusalem Day march, when thousands of young Israelis paraded through the Old City. Around half of Israelis now believe entering a church is forbidden, up from 10 percent in 2008, according to a Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue poll.

The escalation is testing Israel's bond with US evangelical Christians, a core pillar of the MAGA movement, after evangelical organizations faced visa rejections and a senior Catholic cardinal was denied entry to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The incidents, once sporadic, now target clerics, nuns and overtly Christian symbols across the Old City. Benedictine Abbot Nikodemus Schnabel, who arrived in Jerusalem in 2000 when spitting was rare, said "there is no day that people are not spitting at me." Attackers often come for his pectoral cross and shout at him to remove it.

The trend has deep roots. In 2013, attackers desecrated a Protestant cemetery in Jerusalem; two years later, Jewish extremists set fire to the Tabgha monastery, where Christians believe Jesus performed the loaves-and-fish miracle. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's far-right national security minister, defended the arsonists as a lawyer and has said spitting on Christians is an ancient Jewish custom that should not be a crime.

Harani's data shows the biggest culprits are young Israelis, and the most common forms are spitting and verbal abuse, including shouts of "Death to Christians." Trash is often thrown at monasteries. In April, a French nun on Mount Zion was shoved to the ground by a Jewish extremist; most incidents go unpunished, victims and rights groups say.

The hostility reflects a broader knowledge gap. "The notion they have of Christianity is not very complex," said Orit Ramon, a professor of Christian history at Jerusalem's Open University. "They know Christian society mostly through the events of violence by European Christians towards Jews," from the Crusades to the Holocaust. Many young Israelis also resent the Catholic Church for criticizing the conduct of the war in Gaza and defending Palestinians.

US Evangelical Ties Under Strain

The fallout has reached Washington. When Mike Huckabee took over as US ambassador last year, he was shocked to find evangelical Christian organizations struggling to obtain clergy visas. After failed talks with Israel's interior minister, Huckabee turned to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who finally released the visas. "The best friends that the state of Israel has are evangelical Christians from America," Huckabee said.

The diplomatic friction carries economic stakes. Christian pilgrimage is a pillar of Israel's tourism industry, and evangelical groups are among its most reliable visitors. A sustained erosion of religious freedom could deter pilgrimages and deepen a rift with the US evangelical base that underpins political support for Israel in Washington.

There are signs the prejudice can be reversed. Alicia Nudelman, an Israeli volunteer, described how a group of yeshiva students who once spat near nuns later greeted them with a warm "Shabbat Shalom" after their seminary head intervened. "For the first time, they were trying to reach out," she said. "They wanted to understand."

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