Armenians were the most persecuted Christian community in Jerusalem in 2025, with 43 of the 150 reported attacks against Christians in the city taking place in the Armenian Quarter, according to the newly released annual summary from the Religious Freedom Data Center (RFDC).
This was reported by Jerusalemite-Armenian journalist Kegham Balian.
The Armenian Quarter recorded more incidents than any other location in Jerusalem, outpacing the Via Dolorosa (32), West Jerusalem (22), Mount Zion (18), Jaffa Gate (17), and other Old City locations (12).
Across all of Israel, the RFDC documented 181 incidents of harassment targeting Christians, Christian symbols, and Christian institutions in 2025. The overwhelming concentration was in Jerusalem, which accounted for 150 of those cases, with the remaining 18 in Haifa and the North and 13 in the Center and South.
By type, spitting remained the most common form of harassment, making up roughly 60 percent of all incidents, or about 109 cases. Verbal abuse including insults, threats, and shouting accounted for another 18 percent (32 incidents), followed by vandalism and damage to religious symbols at 12 percent (22 incidents). Physical violence made up 5 percent of cases (9 incidents), with desecration of holy sites and degrading behavior at 3 percent (6 incidents), and online incitement at 2 percent (3 incidents). The RFDC noted that many cases go unreported entirely, while others are filed too late to be captured in quarterly tallies, meaning the actual scale of the phenomenon is almost certainly higher.
Incidents spiked during periods of heightened religious intensity, including the High Holy Days, Hanukkah, the December and January holiday season, Passover and Easter, Shavuot and Pentecost, Jerusalem Day, Bein HaMetzarim, and Tisha B’Av. The center also reported a clear pattern of increased attacks during religious processions and in situations involving visible Christian symbols, a dynamic that places Armenian clergy and worshippers, who are often visibly identifiable in the Old City, at particular risk.
On enforcement, the picture remained grim. The RFDC assisted in filing 33 complaints with Israeli police in 2025, with at least another 12 filed directly by Christians or initiated by police action. Most of those complaints were closed, some remain under investigation, and indictments have been extremely rare relative to the scale of documented harassment. As the report bluntly noted, there is still no police officer specifically designated to liaise with the Christian community in Israel.
There were, however, modest signs of institutional pushback during the year. Sixteen vandalized church directional signs were reported and subsequently repaired by responsible authorities after the intervention of RFDC volunteers. Public statements opposing spitting and abuse against Christians were issued by leading rabbinical authorities, including Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu (Chief Rabbi of Safed), Rabbi Nebenzahl (Rabbi of the Jewish Quarter), and Rabbi Rabinovitch (Rabbi of the Holy Sites). The RFDC indicated plans to launch a dedicated website cataloguing rabbinical rulings on the issue.
The center itself continues to operate as a fully volunteer initiative, with roughly 90 percent of the data in the annual report collected by volunteers and another 10 percent by the Rossing Center. None of the volunteers, including the director, receive compensation, and operational costs are largely shouldered by the volunteers themselves. For the first time, the center received a significant donation from an anonymous Orthodox Jewish donor, designated for website design, graphics, quarterly reports, and special projects.
The RFDC maintains active cooperation with the Latin Patriarchate and the Franciscan Custos, who for the past three years have annually circulated an official letter encouraging reporting and cooperation. Supportive working relationships also exist with representatives of the Armenian and Syriac churches. The center noted, however, that without the formal endorsement of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch and several other church leaders, comprehensive reporting coverage remains limited, which means the documented 181 incidents almost certainly understate the actual scale.
The Religious Freedom Data Center was founded in June 2023 by Yisca Harani, an Israeli activist, scholar, and expert in Christian history and interfaith relations, in response to a sharp rise in anti-Christian incidents in Jerusalem, particularly in the Old City. Two and a half years into its operation, its annual data has now anchored in a full year of statistical record what Armenians in Jerusalem have been describing for years: that the Armenian Quarter is the single most targeted Christian location in the city, in a pattern that has held quarter after quarter and now year over year.
