Four Israelis were arrested over the weekend in connection with the August 2 attack on the Armenian Cathedral of St. James in Jerusalem’s Old City, weeks after six others were detained over the same incident. This was confirmed to Zartonk Media by Jerusalemite-Armenian journalist Kegham Balian.
Israel Police announced the arrests on Sunday, saying the four were among seven suspects detained over the weekend in cases involving religious sites and burial grounds in the Old City. The other three, all adults, were arrested on suspicion of vandalizing Muslim graves, in an incident police documented with footage showing three men kicking over a tombstone. All four, along with the three suspects in the cemetery case, were released under restrictive conditions after questioning.
In the August 2 attack, six Israelis, five minors and one adult, spat at the entrance of Saint James and threw stones at the compound. Balian, who published the surveillance footage, reported that the group also threw stones at the window of an Armenian woman filming them from her home while shouting, “Get back inside, you daughter of a whore!” The Jerusalem Post credited Balian by name for that account in its own coverage, as did the Times of Israel.
Three of those six were brought before the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, where police requested an extension of their detention. The other three were released under restrictive conditions, including orders barring them from the Old City for 15 days. Ten Israelis have now been arrested over the August 2 attack.
The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem filed a formal complaint with Israeli authorities and issued a public appeal to US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, calling on him to condemn the attacks and press the Israeli government to prosecute them as hate crimes. “These are hate crimes anywhere in the West,” the Patriarchate said. “Why aren’t they hate crimes here?”
On August 26, Quds News Network published separate surveillance footage showing a settler spitting at the entrance of the cathedral, documenting an incident from the previous night. On May 2, the Palestinian Jerusalem Governorate published footage of an Israeli settler spitting at the cathedral entrance and making obscene gestures at the camera that recorded him.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who oversees the police, has twice dismissed this conduct as a criminal matter. In a 2017 interview with Ynet, Ben Gvir invoked what he called an ancient Jewish custom of spitting when passing priests or monasteries and argued that spitting to the side was not a crime. In October 2023, as national security minister, he said that spitting at Christians should be condemned but did not warrant arrest and was not a criminal case.
On April 23, 2026, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar appointed veteran diplomat George Deek to the newly created post of Special Envoy to the Christian World. Deek had most recently served as Israel’s ambassador to Azerbaijan. Five days later, a French nun was assaulted on Mount Zion, and police arrested a 36-year-old suspect on suspicion of racially motivated assault. On August 27, a Jerusalem court acquitted him on grounds of insanity and ordered psychiatric hospitalization for up to six years.
The Religious Freedom Data Center, an independent Israeli watchdog founded in June 2023 by the scholar Yisca Harani, recorded 50 anti-Christian incidents between April and June 2025. Sixty-four percent took place within the Old City, and half of those were centered around the Armenian Patriarchate, making it the most frequently targeted Christian site in Jerusalem. The Rossing Center’s 2025 report, cited last week in a major Ynet investigation, documented 155 incidents in total, including 61 physical assaults, 52 attacks on church property, 28 incidents of verbal harassment, and 14 cases of vandalism against Christian signs and symbols.
The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem dates to the 7th century, and Armenian presence in the city is documented from at least the 4th. The Cathedral of St. James is the seat of the Patriarchate and of the Brotherhood of St. James. The Armenian community of the Old City numbered 1,598 in 1967 and now stands below 1,000.
