On April 28, 2026, a 48-year-old French Dominican nun was violently assaulted in occupied East Jerusalem, in front of the Cenacle on Mount Zion, the site Christians venerate as the location of the Last Supper. According to her institute’s director, Father Olivier Poquillon, the nun “felt someone come up behind her and throw her with full force onto a rock,” and “while the sister was on the ground, the man began to kick her repeatedly.” Photographs released by Israeli police show extensive bruising to her face. A 36-year-old Israeli man was arrested the same night and is being held on suspicion of racist assault.
The nun is a researcher at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française, the Dominican-run French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem. It is one of the oldest and most respected Catholic research institutions in the Holy Land. Father Poquillon described the attack publicly as an “unprovoked assault” and an “act of sectarian violence,” calling on Israeli authorities to “act swiftly and firmly.” The French Consulate General in Jerusalem also condemned the attack and demanded the assailant be “brought to justice.”
A Site Holy to Two Faiths
The Cenacle sits on Mount Zion, immediately adjacent to King David’s Tomb. It is one of the most layered sites in the Old City. Christians revere it as the Upper Room where Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples. Jews revere it as the burial place of King David. Both faiths visit the site daily, and Israeli police statements after the attack emphasized that Jerusalem is “a city sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike.”
That is precisely what makes the attack significant. This was not a remote settler outpost in the West Bank. It was a site under direct Israeli police jurisdiction, in the heart of the Old City, in broad daylight.
Part of a Documented Pattern
The Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, which monitors anti-Christian incidents in Israel and the occupied territories, recorded 155 incidents in 2025 alone. That figure includes 61 physical assaults, 52 attacks on church property, 28 cases of harassment, and 14 incidents of defaced signage. The center reported an additional 44 incidents between January and March 2026. Researchers describe these documented cases as the “tip of the iceberg,” noting that most incidents go unreported.
The attack also comes amid a broader campaign of pressure on Christian institutions in Jerusalem. Earlier this year, Israel’s Education Ministry barred teachers holding Palestinian-issued teaching permits from working in Israel. That decision puts more than 200 Christian teachers at risk of losing their jobs and threatens the closure of several Christian schools across the city.
In the West Bank, settlers have renewed attacks on Taybeh, one of the few remaining majority-Christian Palestinian towns. Over the past year, Catholic, Orthodox, and Armenian church leaders in Jerusalem have repeatedly issued joint statements warning that the Christian presence in the Holy Land, already reduced to less than 2% of the population, is “in danger.”
What the Coverage Misses
What is striking about the international coverage of this incident is what it leaves out.
Most outlets covering the assault have framed it as an isolated act by a single deranged individual. The framing treats the nun as a Catholic religious figure attacked by a “Jerusalem man,” with the religious and political context of Israeli settler violence largely absent from the headlines. Middle East Eye is one of the few outlets to place the attack in its actual context: a “pattern” of attacks on Christians by Israelis, occurring under a sociopolitical climate that is “increasingly intolerant of diversity and more assertive in exclusivist national-religious claims.”
That pattern is the story. A Dominican nun, in habit, beaten and thrown to the ground in front of a Christian holy site by an Israeli settler, in a country whose Western allies frame their support as a defense of religious liberty and a protection for Christians in the Middle East, should be a much bigger headline than it is.
It isn’t. And that’s the part worth examining.
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DISCLAIMER:
This video examines public reporting, documents, and allegations as reported by established outlets and primary sources. No claims are presented as fact beyond what is documented. This content is not intended to promote hate, misinformation, or harassment. Independent verification is encouraged.
