An Israeli settler suspected of kicking and wounding a French Catholic nun in Jerusalem will go on trial for assault motivated by hostility towards a religious group, Israel’s justice ministry said on Thursday.
The assault on the nun, a 48-year-old researcher at Jerusalem’s French School of Biblical and Archaeological Research, occurred on Mount Zion, just outside the Old City.
The suspect, named Yona Simcha Schreiber, 36, is from an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank named Peduel.
He has been under arrest since 29 April, and the prosecution has asked that he remain in detention until the trial, the ministry said in a statement.
The man faces a charge of assault resulting in injuries, motivated by hostility towards a religious group.
Surveillance footage from the scene showed an attacker rushing towards the nun, who was dressed in a white habit and black veil, and violently pushing her to the ground, her head hitting a stone block.
The man leaves, only to return and kick her before being stopped by a passer-by.
The French consulate in Jerusalem had condemned the attack, demanding that the man behind it be brought to trial.
At the time, the Faculty of Humanities at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University in a statement expressed “profound shock and condemnation”, and deplored the increasingly common nature of the attack.
“This is not an isolated incident, but part of a troubling pattern of rising hostility towards the Christian community and its symbols,” the faculty said.
Israel’s foreign ministry condemned the “shameful act” in a statement on X, and claimed Israel remained committed “to safeguarding freedom of religion and freedom of worship for all faiths”.
Israeli soldiers and individuals, however, have repeatedly attacked both Palestinian Muslim and Christian people and places of worship over the decades.
