Palantir
https://youtu.be/mBW9QCVDSjY?si=Hu9RS1bhlCp2jCfR
We’ve got DNI Pulte over there as the new director. We also know you have the task force set up on declassification, maybe looking, talking about international, maybe looking at some declassification. Are you able to give us an update on that?
Trump: We are. We need to declassify almost everything. And you know, by the way, we have Jay Clayton is going in. You know, Bill Pulte is a very talented guy, but he’s just there temporarily until Jay Clayton, and Jay Clayton is going through the process, and Jay Clayton, highly respected, and so is Bill Pulte, but Bill is there just for a fairly short period of time. But while he’s there, I said, you can declassify whatever you want.
Do you think we’re going to get some soon?
Trump: I told him he can do it. You got to ask him, but I think that Bill will declassify. I told him you can declassify whatever you want. So, Bill’s there just for maybe a month or two months or something, and Jay is going through the process. He’s got a hearing in two weeks. Highly respected man, Jay Clayton.
https://rumble.com/embed/v79wr2c/?pub=4
Microsoft Plans Thousands Of Job Cuts As Stock Suffers Worst Start In Years
Microsoft shares are on track for one of their worst starts to a year in two decades, down roughly 21% year to date as of Tuesday’s close, as a cloud and sales hiring freeze and a broader “reset” of the Xbox unit have made recent headlines. This comes on top of growing concern over Microsoft’s AI spending boom.
Like much of the technology sector, Microsoft and other tech giants became labor-heavy after years of overhiring before and during the early Covid period. Now, the AI capex boom is forcing a major reassessment.
Hyperscalers are pouring hundreds of billions into data center buildouts, while AI chatbots and automation tools are beginning to replace white-collar tasks. The result is a broad workforce reset across Big Tech, with companies such as Microsoft rethinking headcount.
Business Insider reports that Microsoft is preparing to announce yet another round of job cuts as early as next week. The report was based on people familiar with upcoming labor restructuring efforts.
The layoffs are expected to affect thousands of employees across sales, consulting, and Xbox, though the reductions will be smaller than last year’s reductions. The next round is expected to be around 2.5% of Microsoft’s roughly 220,000-person workforce.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/microsoft-plans-thousands-job-cuts-stock-suffers-worst-start-years
Russia Closes Border Crossings With Several NATO States After Finland Lifts Nuclear Ban
Finland's parliament has finally followed through with a previously threatened move to reverse its decades-long ban on nuclear weapons. The June 17 vote to lift the ban in effect legally authorizes the Nordic country to receive, transport, and facilitate the movement of nuclear weapons on its territory as part of allied operations, with the representatives' final tally at 125 to 61.
Finland officially became the 31st member of NATO in April 2023 - having abandoned its historic neutrality in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in what was among the fastest accession processes in the Western military alliance's history. Now it is already willing to host allied nukes on its territory, making it a target of Russian retaliation.
Moscow has long warned against such an ultra-provocative move. The Kremlin said Monday that this requires a response - given also the fact that Russia and Finland share an over 800-mile long border, which is made up largely of Arctic frontier.
"The results of the vote represent both bright and unflattering victory of the blind Russophobia of the past few years over what we have always viewed as pragmatic sanity in Finland," said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
“And let nobody doubt that [response] measures will be taken timely and effectively. In this light, the Finnish people need to think whether this decision made by their elites will actually enhance security in Finland itself,” she added.
As a start, Russia has moved to shutter more rail crossings to NATO states, including Finland - which is to further severely impact trade:
Russia has closed seven railway border checkpoints with Finland, Estonia and Latvia, according to a government decree published Tuesday.
The suspension, which takes effect July 1, halts the movement of individuals, vehicles and cargo through the designated rail crossings. Five of the shuttered checkpoints are located on the Finnish border, while Estonia and Latvia each have one crossing affected.
Officials have not disclosed the reasons for the closures or when the checkpoints might reopen.
In Estonia, the Ivangorod freight and passenger crossing will remain open, and in Latvia, the Sebezh crossing will also stay open. However, the closures leave Finland with no open railway crossings with Russia, which normally exports fertilizer to Finland by rail.
Finland shut its eastern vehicle and pedestrian border crossings with Russia indefinitely in December 2023 following an influx of asylum seekers.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russia-closes-border-crossings-several-nato-states-after-finland-lifts-ban-nuclear
Clown making threats/projections
CIA chief warns of AI-powered ‘digital nuclear weapons’
The remarks follow a Five Eyes spy alliance warning that cyberwarfare could become a critical threat within months
AI-driven cyberoffensive tools can be compared to “digital nuclear weapons,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe has said, warning that they could fuel rivalries among global powers.
Ratcliffe made the comparison on Tuesday in a speech at the Amazon Web Services summit in Washington, where he discussed the spy agency’s efforts to speed up the acquisition of private-sector products for its own use.
“AI tools will only continue to raise the stakes in our competition with all of America’s adversaries,” Ratcliffe said. It would be “not misplaced to refer to their capabilities as akin to digital nuclear weapons,” he added, citing discussions within the administration of US President Donald Trump.
Ratcliffe claimed that rival nations “work to steal and to manipulate America’s advancements for their own ends and gains.”
Promise of US AI dominance
Promises of rapid advances in AI capabilities, including in hacking, have been a constant feature of the global digital technology race. Last month, the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, comprising Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, the UK, and the US, warned that frontier models are “anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities,” adding that “the timeline is not years, it is months.”
US Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) echoed the warning during an Intelligence Committee hearing, saying National Security Agency chief Joshua Rudd had told him that Anthropic’s Mythos 5 model “broke into almost all of our classified systems, not in weeks, but in hours.” According to the New York Times, the description “simplified” the spy agency’s controlled tests, which were aimed at AI-assisted identification of cybersecurity flaws rather than actual hacking.
The ongoing boom in the American AI sector is based on hopes of massive future profits to justify the hundreds of billions of dollars in investment. Some analysts have described it as a financial bubble, warning that it could crash unless US tech giants achieve global dominance.
https://www.rt.com/news/642432-ai-digital-nuclear-weapons/
Lawmakers Kill Legislation Barring Convicted Pedophiles From Running For Office
California lawmakers killed a bill that would have barred registered sex offenders from running for office Tuesday after advancing a similar bill allowing candidates who have committed sex crimes against minors.
Bill 2753, proposed by Democratic state Assemblywoman Esmeralda Soria in February, would have amended California’s elections code to prohibit all registered sex offenders from running for any state or local office, according to the text of the bill. The bill failed in the California Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee Tuesday after moving through the California State Assembly with bipartisan support, Los Banos Enterprise reported.
Bill 2691, introduced by Democratic State Assemblywoman Dawn Addis in February, is similar legislation that bans individuals convicted of specific felony sexual assault or human trafficking crimes from running for office. It passed the California Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee last week. Unlike Bill 2753, this bill does not cover all offenses requiring sex offender registration.
Before the Senate committee advanced the bill, legislators amended it by defining “sexual assault” so certain criminal convictions would not bar individuals from candidacy. Under the amendment, individuals guilty of sodomy, oral copulation, or sexual penetration against minors under certain conditions are not included under the definition of “sexual assault” and can still run for office.
https://dailycaller.com/2026/07/01/california-sex-offenders-public-office-scott-wiener-esmeralda-soria/
MAHA, Farming Org Reportedly Had ‘Shocking’ Oval Office Fight That Even Concerned Trump
A prominent agriculture lobbyist warned President Donald Trump that that taking action to promote pesticide alternatives would cause him to lose support among farming interests, Axios first reported Wednesday.
The purported confrontation suggests that supporters of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement who hope to crack down on conventional pesticides are at odds with the farm lobby’s quest to safeguard them, according to the outlet.
Trump, Kennedy, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins and American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) President Zippy Duvall held a Thursday meeting in the Oval Office to talk about an executive order on pesticides that the president was set to sign later in the day, Axios reported. Some of Kennedy’s staff who attended the meeting were upset about the U.S. Supreme Court siding with the maker of Roundup earlier on Thursday, leading to rising tension among the MAHA movement.
The HHS Secretary told Trump that the court’s decision was a massive setback for supporters of his health-oriented movement, according to the outlet.
Kennedy also claimed that the order, which aims to promote alternatives to conventional pesticides in the food supply and expand research into their effects, could potentially help counter the ruling’s impacts, Axios reported, citing three anonymous sources familiar with the matter.
Jonathan Lundgren, a South Dakota farmer and former USDA official also asked the president to sign the executive order during the meeting, alleging that pesticide usage negatively impacts farmers’ health.
“One of the take-home messages I really wanted [Trump] to understand is that the farmers were sick right now,” Lundgren told Axios. “We’re literally killing our farmers with these food systems.”
During the meeting, multiple other farmers similarly voiced support for Lundgren’s backing of regenerative agriculture, the outlet reported. Regenerative agriculture refers to the process of renewing degraded soils using certain management practices such as no or limited usage of pesticides and synthetic fertilizer, according to Noble Research Institute.
Meanwhile, Duvall urged Trump not to sign the order, claiming it could cause him to lose the backing of farming interests, according to Axios. Lundgren told Axios that Duvall confronting Trump was “shocking,” and that the president seemed visibly concerned and “wanted to understand why Zippy was so worried.”
Duvall and White House Senior Advisor Calley Means later clashed during the meeting, with Means telling Duvall it was obvious that he had not actually read the executive order, Axios reported, citing three anonymous sources familiar with the situation.
“It was intense in there,” Lundgren told Axios. “They were arguing. It was back and forth.”
Rollins, who has publicly defended glyphosate and other conventional pesticides, called for Trump to sign the order, Axios reported. Trump signed the order after receiving additional feedback, and Duvall later said he would support the move. Glyphosate is one of the most commonly used herbicides in the U.S. but its critics allege that it can cause certain cancers.
HHS did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
“We don’t comment on private meetings with the President, on or off the record,” a USDA spokesman told the DCNF. “It’s unfortunate that others do.”
https://dailycaller.com/2026/07/01/maha-farming-oval-office-trump-pesticides-glyphosate/
The KIDS Act Would Require Age Checks To Get Online
A new push for age verification online raises fresh concerns about digital ID, surveillance, and censorship.
Within the next week, Congress is preparing to vote on the KIDS Act, a sprawling package of legislation that seeks to control Americans’ web browsing and private messaging. The package includes a revised version of the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, combined with a collection of other internet bills, study bills, reporting requirements, and new regulations. Instead of debating any of these proposals on their merits, lawmakers are attempting to move them all at once under an ultra-expedited process.
The package of cobbled-together bills is a mess, with different age-gating schemes for different services, using different standards. It’s a lot of complexity, and a lot of legal risk. Faced with that, many companies will conclude that the safest option is restrictive age-checking practices across their entire platforms.
Buried inside the KIDS Act are provisions that will push online services to verify all users’ ages, require government-directed moderation policies for online speech, and even create new rules about private and encrypted communications. While supporters continue to claim this bill protects minors online, its requirements come at the expense of privacy, free expression, and the ability of people of all ages to use the internet without revealing sensitive data.
The KIDS Act Pressures Platforms to Check Everyone's Age
Supporters of KOSA have said the bill doesn’t require age verification. And technically, the KOSA section of the bill does say that KOSA shouldn’t be read to require age verification.
But if you read the rest of the bill, that disclaimer starts to look hollow.
Throughout the KOSA section of the legislation, special protections, controls, messaging settings, and parental tools are required whenever a website or app “knows or should have known” a user is a child (defined in the bill as anyone under 13) or a teen (defined as anyone between 13 and 16 years old).
The problem is a website operator doesn’t need actual knowledge that a user is a minor to get in legal trouble. It applies when a platform “knows or should have known” a user’s age—a low, negligence-style standard of knowledge. If an online service gets it wrong, it’s going to be up to courts and regulators to decide, after the fact, if an online service “should” have known a user was 16.
To try to avoid liability, services will have to determine which users are teenagers and which are not. Most won’t be able to simply trust their users. They’ll have to collect more information about age, before any lawsuit or government action arises. Some companies may respond by requesting driver's licenses or passports. Others will rely on age-estimation systems that attempt to guess users' ages by looking at existing activity or doing facial scans. Existing estimation systems make mistakes when estimating children’s ages correctly, which is a big problem when that is the population KOSA is trying to protect. And the systems fail more frequently for people of color, people with disabilities, and trans and nonbinary people.
The bill’s authors seem to know this is a problem. On the one hand, the new KOSA section says age verification is not required. On the other, it repeatedly imposes obligations that depend on knowing whether a user is under 17. But a disclaimer doesn’t magically eliminate legal risk, especially for smaller services and startups that can’t afford to defend lawsuits or fight regulators.
KOSA is not the only part of this package that creates age-verification pressure. The SAFE BOTS Act, like KOSA, goes back to the standard that if a service “knows or should have known” that a user is a minor it can’t offer certain chatbot features.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/kids-act-would-require-age-checks-get-online
Greece: Five Injured in Firebomb Attacks on Homes of Governing Conservative Party Members
THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) – Three pre-dawn firebomb attacks apparently targeting the residences of members of Greece’s governing conservative New Democracy party have left five people hospitalized, authorities said Wednesday.
The attacks between 4 a.m. and 4:45 a.m. outside apartment buildings in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki used crude explosive devices made with camping gas canisters. All the injuries were sustained from the last of the three attacks, where cars and motorcycles were set ablaze, police said.
One of the cars reportedly was owned by a parliamentary candidate for the New Democracy party. The candidate suffered burns and her mother was hospitalized in intensive care with burns, police said.
Three other residents in the apartment building were hospitalized with smoke inhalation, police said.
Attacks by shadowy Greek militant groups against symbols of power or the property of politicians, police or other authority figures are relatively frequent. Most cause material damage but no injuries.
A bomb exploded in July 2025 outside the Thessaloniki home of the president of Greece’s association of prison guards. The prison guard association president was unharmed but two others suffered minor injuries from shattered glass.
In June 2024, a police officer guarding the home of a top judge in Athens was injured in a gasoline bomb attack.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2026/07/01/greece-five-injured-in-firebomb-attacks-on-homes-of-governing-conservative-party-members/
CIA hit with lawsuit for illegally investigating unvaccinated employees as espionage threats.
Lawsuit claims CIA chief operating officer ordered counter-espionage department to probe all unvaccinated workers and contractors.
Unvaccinated staff were treated as threats to the US government according to the filing.
Case seeks class action status for affected employees and contractors.
Feds For Freedom announces support for the lawsuit against the agency.
Investigation came during COVID vaccine mandate period.
Treating vaccine refusers like spies shows how far agencies went to push compliance and punish dissent.
This kind of overreach erodes trust fast when intelligence tools get used on internal medical choices.
Lawsuit could open the door to more cases against other agencies that did similar targeting.
The CIA investigated thousands of personnel and contractors for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine, a new lawsuit states.
In 2021, then-President Joe Biden imposed vaccine mandates for federal employees and contractors. Shortly after, the CIA’s chief operating officer directed the Counter Espionage Department to probe all unvaccinated workers and contractors.
The agency treated refusers as threats to the United States government. A cross-agency group led by former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard learned of the order in 2025 from a whistleblower and received CIA confirmation of the investigations.
The CIA did not cite any authority for the directive. Plaintiff James Erdman III, an unvaccinated employee, asked the agency to remove all investigation-related material from files but got no response.
This led to the lawsuit filed June 30 in federal court in Virginia. The suit seeks class certification for affected employees and contractors.
It also asks the court to declare the order illegal and force the CIA to delete the information from files. None of the investigated workers were fired.
https://citizenwatchreport.com/cia-hit-with-lawsuit-for-illegally-investigating-unvaccinated-employees-as-espionage-threats/
https://www.antiwar.com/
Netanyahu: The pursuit of ‘total victory’ against Iran and its proxies ‘never ends’
In first Hebrew media interview of election campaign, PM says full unity not possible but that he seeks to form broad gov’t after election that will include far-right, Haredi parties and continue judicial overhaul
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted on Tuesday that his pursuit of “total victory” against Iran and its proxies “never ends,” as he touted what he said have been Israel’s military gains over the past three years, while insisting that there was more work left to do.
In a rare TV Hebrew media interview — albeit on his Channel 14 mouthpiece network — Netanyahu was asked whether his Gaza war pledge to achieve “total victory” is still in force.
“It never ends. Do you want to live in the Middle East or in the world? You have to be very strong. And we are very strong. Israel is stronger than it has ever been, and we have put off threats and weakened (our adversaries) considerably. We have more work to do. We will take care of what is left of the Iranian axis,” Netanyahu said to applause from the supportive audience.
The premier touted Israel’s killing of much of the leadership of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran as well as the buffer zones Israel has established in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, even as he appeared to acknowledge that the results of the Iran war fell short of the more definitive war aims he initially set to destroy Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and to help spark regime change.
Netanyahu has previously argued that Israel will have to forever live by the sword in a world full of adversaries bent on its destruction, but the approach has exposed him to criticism from political opponents who have accused him of extending wars in Gaza and elsewhere in the region in order to remain in power, given that his far-right coalition partners have threatened to collapse his government if he adopted more conciliatory policies.
Netanyahu:
Let me tell you something: The war is never over.
Do you want to live? In the Middle East, and in the world, you must be very strong.
We are very strong. Israel is stronger than ever.
https://twitter.com/i/status/2072035088947093884
Colorado’s pro-Israel, Jewish attorney general wins Democratic primary for governor
Phil Weiser, whose mother was born at Buchenwald two days after liberation, is seeking to replace current Colorado governor Jared Polis, also Jewish
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a strong supporter of Israel, defeated Sen. Michael Bennet in the state’s Democratic primary for governor on Tuesday, getting some 55 percent of the vote.
Weiser is the son of a woman born at Buchenwald two days after the concentration camp’s liberation in 1945, and will now be the Democratic Party candidate for governor of the Rocky Mountain state.
In the governor’s race, Bennet initially had the momentum as a three-term senator and the former superintendent of the Denver Public Schools. But voters ultimately chose Weiser, the two-term attorney general and former clerk for the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“They counted us out, and they underestimated all of you. Together we pushed forward. We did the hard work and we proved the establishment wrong,” Weiser said in his victory speech.
Weiser has been outspoken about his support for Israel and against the rise of antisemitism.
Weiser, whose children attended a Jewish day school and is a longtime member of a Denver synagogue, has emphasized his support for Israel’s existence and has said he identifies as a Zionist.
“It is not hard to explain that being a Zionist means you believe that Israel has a right to exist,” he said in May 2024 during JewishColorado’s Celebrate Israel event. “It does not mean that you necessarily support all of the actions or policies of the current government. It does not mean that Israel has not made mistakes in the war against Hamas. And, most importantly, it does not mean that Jews don’t care about the deaths of Palestinians during this war.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/colorados-pro-israel-jewish-attorney-general-wins-democratic-primary-for-governor/
This scene is (likely) the reason Citizen Vigilante was banned in Germany — wait for the ending.
Citizen Vigilante.
Must watch!
https://twitter.com/i/status/2070356814303007185
Swamp’s Military-Industrial Complex Merger with Israel Inches Closer to Becoming Reality
They’re not even hiding it anymore.
Congress is inching closer to deeply integrating America’s military-industrial complex with Israel’s national security state.
The Senate has proposed $300 million for a program that would benefit Tel Aviv in its version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), while the House version of the 2027 NDAA also includes a related proposal that would provide Israel with some of the U.S. military’s most advanced weapons and manufacturing technologies, along with a $300 million line item titled “Israeli Cooperative Programs.”
The bills passed through the armed services committees in both the House and the Senate. The House is planning to consider the bill on the floor by the week of June 29, while the Senate’s timeline remains unclear.
Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie is moving to strike the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative” in Section 219 of the 2027 NDAA, unveiling an amendment cosponsored by Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna and Rashida Tlaib, among others.
“The Massie-Khanna amendment to strip the US-Israel defense cooperation language out of the NDAA faces major hurdles,” Tori Bateman, Quincy Institute’s advocacy director, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Success is a long shot – but it isn’t out of the question here.”
“Section 224 [now Section 219] would mark a fundamental shift in U.S.-Israel defense cooperation,” Ben Freeman, the director of Democratizing Foreign Policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told the DCNF. “In many areas it would merge the U.S. and Israeli defense industrial bases.”
Massie called the provision dangerous in an X post on June 14.
“The swell of public opposition to this US-Israel defense cooperation language has been incredible,” Bateman told the DCNF. “There are so many constituents engaging in wonky Rules processes, memorizing provision numbers, and calling their Members’ offices. I can only hope that Members respect their constituents enough to let this amendment come up for a vote – and that they respect U.S. interests and congressional oversight enough to ultimately strip this provision from the bill.”
Freeman said that the initiative would reduce transparency in the U.S.-Israel relationship, noting that it calls for “network integration” and “data fusion” with the Israeli military.
“In other words, our data would literally become Israel’s data,” Freeman told the DCNF. “And this would be much less transparent than the current U.S.-Israel defense relationship, which relies primarily on military assistance that Congress at least has the opportunity to review every year, because it would all be happening inside the Pentagon’s bureaucracy.”
The legislation states that it will create “cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, to expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation,” according to the House version of the 2027 NDAA.
“These provisions making it out of committee wasn’t surprising, because for so long this kind of legislation was so non-controversial,” Bateman told the DCNF. “What the movement of this legislation shows is the Members still have a very high appetite for something that is making their constituents sick to their stomach.”
The Senate NDAA provision is in Section 1217, titled “United States-Israel Framework for Upgraded Technologies, Unified Research, and Enhanced Security Act.” The Senate also proposed related legislation in the FUTURES Act on Feb. 12.
The FUTURES Act would authorize $450 million over three years for Israeli interests, but it has not made any progress since it was introduced.
AIPAC, GOP media relations, the Pentagon, and the Israeli Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
More
https://www.vigilantfox.com/p/swamps-military-industrial-complex
Congress just passed bill that forces age checks and risks tracking everyone’s web history.
Congress voted for KIDS Act that ends internet freedom.
Bill requires platforms to add strong parental controls and curb addictive stuff for kids.
It pushes age verification on many sites which can mean ID checks or tracking.
Critics like EFF say this creates surveillance for everyone not just kids.
Bill bans some targeted ads to minors and requires safety reports to FTC.
It passed House Energy and Commerce and moves forward fast with little debate.
Goal is protect children from bullying, exploitation, and harmful content.
Opponents fear it kills anonymous browsing, whistleblowing, and free speech.
EFF deep link on KIDS Act and age checks: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/kids-act-would-require-age-checks-get-online
Congress.gov on H.R.7757 KIDS Act: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7757/text
Israeli extremists are terrorizing Palestinian Christians and their holy sites
The frequency & intensity of hate crimes & terrorist acts against Christians are increasing.
They’re not isolated or spontaneous incidents. They are premeditated crimes, committed by individuals and groups – including members of the police and military – who draw their ideological framework from extremist Religious Zionist doctrine.
This combines historic theological hostility against Christians with modern nationalist politics, in which Christianity is viewed as an enemy of the Jewish people.
These crimes include verbal abuse; spitting at worshippers, holy sites and their entrances; physical violence; storming holy places and cemeteries and vandalising or desecrating them; destroying statues, gravestones and graves; writing racist slogans; throwing stones; theft, looting and arson against property; and occupying buildings and converting them for other uses.
These attacks are carried out across all areas under Israeli control but are particularly concentrated in the Old City of Jerusalem and its quarters, especially the Via Dolorosa and the Armenian Quarter. They also affect other Christian towns in the West Bank, the Palestinian communities within Israel’s 1948 borders, and Gaza.
The scale and geographical spread of these attacks have expanded, as seen recently in southern Lebanon. There, in April 2026, an Israeli soldier decapitated a statue of Christ, and another soldier desecrated a statue of Mary by placing a cigarette in its mouth.
Between these two incidents, a nun in Jerusalem was violently assaulted on 28 April 2026 by an extremist who deliberately shoved her from behind, causing her to fall face-first onto the ground. Not content with an act that nearly cost her her life, he returned while she lay wounded and repeatedly kicked her, with the clear intention of causing further harm.
Recent years have witnessed an escalation in the targeting of the Palestinian Christian presence. According to a report by the Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine, 157 attacks were carried out between 2018 and 2023. In 2025 alone, more than 130 attacks took place, while 14 were documented in the first two months of 2026.
These crimes have also targeted Palestinian Christians in the 1948 areas and their holy sites. Among them were the attacks on St Elijah’s church in Haifa between June and August 2023, involving several repeated assaults by followers of Religious Zionism. In August 2023, the Latin Monastery of the Archangel Gabriel in al-Mujaydil was also attacked and stoned.
In and after 1948, many Christian or mixed towns were depopulated or completely destroyed. In some cases, churches were left standing and limited permission was granted for religious services and for the burial of the dead, while this was denied in other towns.
It was only in 2026 that the people of al-Bassa succeeded in securing the right to pray in the town’s two churches. In the destroyed village of Ma’lul, however, residents were denied access to the cemetery after it was enclosed within a military zone and declared closed. Only after a long legal struggle did the military authorities permit, in very rare and highly restricted cases, visits to some of the graves.
The people of Gaza have not been spared. The report of the Higher Presidential Committee documented several incidents in 2023, most notably the targeting of al-Ahli al-Arabi Baptist Hospital on 17 October 2023, which killed around 500 Palestinians. On 16 December 2023, a woman and her daughter were shot dead by snipers while inside the Holy Family Catholic Church.
https://israelpalestinenews.org/israeli-treatment-of-christians/