Israeli police released graphic footage April 30 showing a man shoving and kicking a French Catholic nun near Mount Zion in Jerusalem in what some have described as sectarian violence.
The footage shows the 36-year-old assailant, whom authorities have since arrested, approaching the nun from behind and shoving her forcefully to the ground near the Upper Room or Cenacle, the site traditionally associated with the Last Supper and Pentecost. The suspect then walked away before returning and kicking the nun repeatedly as she lay injured on the ground.
תקיפת הנזירה אתמול באזור קבר דוד בירושלים - שוטרי מרחב דוד איתרו את החשוד (36) ועצרו אותו בחשד לתקיפה ממניע גזעני >>> pic.twitter.com/agRpznR84X
— משטרת ישראל (@IL_police) April 30, 2026
As Zeale News previously reported, the nun — a 48-year-old researcher at Jerusalem’s French School of Biblical and Archaeological Research — sustained bruising to the right side of her face. The school’s director, Father Oliver Poquillon, previously told French outlet Agence France-Presse that the attack, which occurred on April 29, appeared unprovoked and was an act of “sectarian violence.”
The video’s release came a day after police arrested the suspect on suspicion of assault motivated by racism, as Zeale News reported in its initial coverage of the attack. In a statement cited by The Times of Israel, Israeli police said they viewed with “utmost severity” any violent act “driven by potentially racist motives and directed toward members of the clergy.”
The assault comes amid growing concern among Christian leaders and religious-freedom advocates over harassment and violence targeting Christians in the Holy Land. The Religious Freedom Data Center — a Jerusalem-based initiative monitoring religious freedom — reported there were roughly 181 cases of “harassment targeting Christians, Christian symbols, and Christian institutions” committed in Israel in 2025. It also reported 44 additional incidents between January and March 2026.
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Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, warned in an April 27 pastoral letter of a growing “culture of violence” in the Holy Land. He said expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank are creating the risk of a “permanent occupation” without the rule of law, while Jerusalem’s holy places, “which should be spaces for prayer,” are becoming “battlegrounds about identity.”
The warning came days after Cardinal Pizzaballa, on April 23, met with Israeli authorities over settler encroachments on Church-owned lands in the northern Jordan Valley of the West Bank. As Zeale News reported, the Latin Patriarchate described the activity as a “clear violation of Church properties” and called for legal protection of the Church’s land.
He urged Christians not to abandon efforts to build relationships among religious and national communities, writing that Christians “have a precise mandate: to be salt and light wherever we are.”
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