For Christians in Israel and Jerusalem, intolerance is becoming normal | Religion News | Al Jazeera

At first sight, last week’s unprovoked attack on a French nun walking along a street in occupied East Jerusalem came without warning. However, for the roughly 180,000 Christians living in Israel – and the 10,000 or so Christians living in East Jerusalem – the attack is the latest in a growing number of incidents of abuse, assault, and intimidation that the community says has increased in tandem with Israel’s turn towards far-right nationalism.

While incidents of violence and arson grab the attention, low-level incidents of spitting, insults, and disparaging graffiti have become a daily experience for many Christians in the area – the majority of them Palestinian – contributing to the desire on the part of nearly half of all the religious community under 30 to leave.

‘There’s an absolute lack of confidence in the police, and I think that’s leading to many of the attacks going unreported,” Bendcowsky said. “Unfortunately, that’s often borne out by the evidence. Unless an incident gains international attention, particularly in the US, it often goes uninvestigated, or investigations are closed without any official conclusion.”

In Israel, Christianity is often associated with the Palestinians – and it is therefore perhaps inevitable that as Israel becomes increasingly unrepentant in its killing of Palestinians and seizure of their land, Palestinian Christians and other Christians in the area will not find themselves spared.