Jerusalem’s Rabbi of the Old City and the Rabbi of the Western Wall (Kotel) strongly condemned attacks and acts of disrespect against Christians in Israel, including spitting, according to a report published by Kikar HaShabbat, a Hebrew-language Israeli news website directed toward a Haredi audience.
Rabbi Avigdor Nebenzahl and Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch issued a public appeal calling for the attacks to stop immediately, according to Kikar HaShabbat.
“This ugly act is absolutely forbidden; it constitutes a desecration of God’s name and a blow to the sanctity of Jerusalem,” the rabbis said. “This is not the way of the Torah.”
A few days earlier, a video emerged showing an Israeli extremist spitting on an Armenian priest in Jerusalem’s Old City. The condemnation comes amid a rise in anti-Christian incidents in Israel.
In October, the Religious Freedom Data Center (RFDC), an Israeli watchdog organization dedicated to monitoring and reporting violations of religious freedom, published its quarterly report, “Incidents Against Christians in Israel,” covering July to September 2025 and documenting 31 anti-Christian hate crimes across the country.
The incidents included spitting, verbal abuse, trespassing, vandalism, defacement, online incitement, and desecration of holy sites, primarily concentrated in and around Jerusalem’s Old City.
Of the 31 documented attacks, 13 incidents (42%) occurred inside Jerusalem’s Old City, with nearly half of these, 6 cases (43%), targeting the Armenian Patriarchate. The rest of the Old City incidents took place along the Via Dolorosa (3 cases, 23%), near Jaffa Gate and David Street (2 cases, 17%), and in the Jewish Quarter (2 cases, 17%).
Outside the Old City, 18 attacks (58%) were reported, including 5 incidents (16%) in West Jerusalem, 2 incidents (6%) at Mount Zion, and 11 incidents (36%) in other areas beyond Jerusalem, such as Migdal HaEmek, Latrun, the Sea of Galilee, Capernaum, and Mary’s Spring in Ein Kerem.
