Court indicts ‘Israeli’ for vandalizing church in Haifa, spitting on Arab police officer

• ‘Israeli’ vandalism attacks against churches have increased in recent years. 

A 34-year-old Haifa resident has been indicted Friday for allegedly smashing a church window and then assaulting a police officer after his arrest, the Jerusalem Post reported. 

According to the indictment, the incident began around eight in the morning on a Sunday, before church services were due to begin. 

Mor is accused of entering the church and walking up to the priest's pulpit, at which point a member of the congregation escorted him out of the building. 

After he had left, the indictment says, Mor threw a stone through one of the church's windows and shattered it.

Police arrested Mor and took him to the Haifa police station. While he was held there waiting for a lawyer, he allegedly spat twice in the face of a Druze police officer and shouted racist slurs at him.

Mor, who has no prior criminal record, admitted to the charges during his police interrogation, the Jerusalem Post reported. 

He claimed, however, that he had felt threatened both at the church and by the officer at the police station.

The indictment does not attribute a religious or hate-crime motive to his actions. Alongside the indictment, the police prosecution unit asked the court to keep Mor in detention until the end of the legal proceedings.

‘Israeli’ hate crimes targeting churches

Attacks on Christian sites in ‘Israel’ have drawn growing scrutiny in recent years. The Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, a Jerusalem-based interreligious group, recorded 111 attacks or acts of violence against Christians in 2024, 35 of which involved vandalism of churches, monasteries and public religious signs, with the perpetrators identified in nearly all cases being young ultra-Orthodox Jews from religious-nationalist extremist circles. 

Its 2025 report counted 155 incidents, including 52 acts of vandalism against church property, though another account of the same report puts attacks on church property at 59. 

These attacks include graffiti, stone-throwing and arson, and most of the documented incidents took place in and around Jerusalem's Old City. 

The Rossing Center says the rate of indictments is very low relative to the scale of the phenomenon.

Read more: ‘Israeli’ soldier found dead days after being called back to service