Six Jewish Israelis were arrested overnight Sunday after attacking the Saint James Monastery in the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, taking turns spitting at its entrance and throwing stones at the window of an Armenian woman who filmed them from her residence nearby. This was reported by Jerusalemite-Armenian Kegham Balian on X.
The attack took place at approximately 1:00 a.m. Israeli Police were called to the scene, and officers responding from the Old City’s Kishleh station, backed by the Mabat 2000 surveillance network, launched an immediate search and located the six suspects, five of whom were minors and one an adult. All six were arrested on suspicion of spitting at the monastery and throwing stones at the site.
Balian said the group also shouted insults at the woman while throwing stones at her window: “Get back inside, you daughter of a whore!”
Three of the suspects were later brought before the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, where police requested an extension of their detention. The other three were released under restrictive conditions. Restraining orders were also issued against three of the suspects, barring them from Jerusalem’s Old City for 15 days. The investigation remains open.
The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem filed a formal complaint with Israeli authorities and issued a direct public appeal to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, calling on him to condemn the escalating anti-Christian hate crimes in Jerusalem.
“Mr. Huckabee, we call on you again to condemn these acts of hate against Christians in Jerusalem,” the Patriarchate said in its statement. “We call on you again to ask the Israeli government to criminalize these acts for what they are. These are hate crimes anywhere in the West. Why aren’t they hate crimes here?”
Huckabee, an Evangelical Christian, has previously visited the Palestinian Christian village of Taybeh in a show of solidarity after an arson attempt near the historic St. George’s Church there, but has not yet publicly addressed the growing pattern of attacks on Christian sites inside Jerusalem itself.
The arrests have been reported by Israeli press including the Jerusalem Post and Israel National News. The coverage comes days after Ynet, one of Israel’s largest media outlets, published an extensive investigation confirming what Armenian residents of the Old City had been warning about for years: that spitting on Christian clergy, vandalism of churches, and harassment of religious processions in Jerusalem have become a daily reality.
The Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue’s 2025 report, cited by Ynet, documented 61 physical attacks on Christian clergy and laity, 52 cases of damage to church property, 28 incidents of harassment during religious processions, and 14 cases of vandalism against church signs across Israel and East Jerusalem. According to the Religious Freedom Data Center, an Israeli watchdog founded in 2023 to document anti-Christian incidents, the Armenian Patriarchate is the single most frequently targeted site in the entire Old City, with half of all hate crimes recorded in the Old City between April and June 2025 taking place inside the Armenian Quarter alone.
Saint James Monastery has been the seat of the Armenian Apostolic Brotherhood of Jerusalem since at least the 7th century. It is one of the oldest continuously functioning Christian institutions in the world, and the spiritual and administrative center of the Armenian community of Jerusalem, which has lived in the Old City since the 4th century.
