Free Republic

Throughout the past decade, the Christian community across the Middle East has been targeted by hatred, terrorism, and overall persecution. This has resulted in a massive decrease in the Christian population throughout the Middle East, which today constitutes 3% of the region’s population, compared to constituting around 14% in 1900. In Israel, the opposite trend is seen. In 2025, Christians in Israel accounted for 1.9% of the country’s population, and the population had increased by 0.7% from 2023 to 2024. Yet when it comes to the international media, stories of Christian hatred in Israel are more frequently the aspects of...

JERUSALEM—In Jerusalem’s Old City, a group of Israeli teenagers recently banged on the door of the headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church and asked if there were Christians inside it. They wanted to spit at them.The boys said it was a religious duty, or mitzvah, to humiliate Christians, or, as they called them, idol worshipers. “We are supposed to hate them,” explained one teen, wrapped in an Israeli flag. They were among the thousands of mostly young Israelis who on that May afternoon marched through the historic Old City for a national celebration that marks the capture of East Jerusalem...