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Shadowing practice: ‘We are afraid’: Christians in Jerusalem warn of escalating violence | DW News

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  1. Anti -Christian attacks are on the rise in Israel, specifically in Jerusalem.0:00
  2. Victims say that the cases that have become public in recent weeks are just the tip of the iceberg.0:04
  3. But there are also voices in Israel speaking out against the growing violence.0:11
  4. DW correspondent Jan -Philip Schultz meets an abbot in Jerusalem who says that he is a victim of almost daily threats and intimidation.0:16
  5. When Nicodemus Schnabel leaves his monastery in Jerusalem, he has learned to be ready for anything.0:26
  6. Every day people spit in front of him and insult him.0:33
  7. Soldiers are spitting too, in uniform and this is you know, you know, people in uniform spitting on you, you know, whatever, whatever shall I say.0:38
  8. A recent video of a nun attacked in broad daylight has caused widespread shock.0:45
  9. Many Christians in Jerusalem say that intimidations and harassment have become commonplace.0:49
  10. It's a young monk.0:58
  11. They're really spitting on me in the nighttime, you know, in dark alleys without eyewitnesses because they know if I attack the monk it's not accepted.1:00
  12. Now it's during daylight, people around and they don't care.1:11
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  1. Israeli organizations report a sharp rise in violent attacks on Christians.1:15
  2. At the same time, initiatives promoting interfaith dialogue are coming under increasing pressure.1:20
  3. That's majority of Israelis think it's a very severe incident and these people have to punish severely.1:26
  4. But I think there's no enough condemning from the authorities, from the government, from the politician, the opposite.1:32
  5. They're kind of inflaming and inciting their atmosphere.1:41
  6. Critics say that Prime Minister Netanyahu's far -right coalition partners in particular are fueling the tension.1:44
  7. Ultra -nationalist politician Itama Ben -Guihr, currently security minister, has repeatedly downplayed the attacks on Christians and in the past even justified them.1:52
  8. It's an ancient Jewish tradition that when you pass by a monastery or a priest, you spit.2:02
  9. You can agree or disagree, but when you spit to the side, I don't think it's an offense.2:07
  10. As a result, fear is spreading in Jerusalem's Christian quarter.2:11
  11. Many residents refuse to speak publicly.2:16
  12. We are afraid because we are alone.2:19
  13. We are a girl.2:22
  14. Nobody will help.2:24
  15. There will be more and more problems.2:26
  16. No one is trying to solve these problems.2:27
  17. We don't have much hope.2:29
  18. Our only hope is our children get better education than what we did, so they can find their future somewhere else.2:30
  19. Many here say they remember when the city was proud to be a holy place for many religions, but those times appear to be over.2:38
  20. A recent study found that half of Christians under 45 are considering leaving.2:46
  21. We know how badly we treated Jews and also we see the really rising phenomenon of anti -Semitism, but this is not an excuse not to look on the reality2:52
  22. here on the ground.3:05
  23. About Nicodemus hopes that Jerusalem will continue to have room for Jews, Christians and Muslims, but for that to happen, he says the world must pay attention.3:06
  24. And we are joined now by Hannah Benkovski, who we just saw in that report.3:19
  25. She is program director of the Jerusalem Center for Jewish -Christian Relations at the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue in Jerusalem.3:23
  26. Thank you so much for your time.3:31
  27. You mentioned that most Israelis view these incidents as serious.3:33
  28. Why do you think that there is still a lack of strong response from authorities?3:39
  29. Well, I think what we find is that people find it severe and think that people need to be punished by the authorities.3:45
  30. More reluctant.3:54
  31. I don't know if it's lack of care or if it's laziness of its policy or it's somewhere in between, but we unfortunately don't see the law enforced properly in3:55
  32. these cases.4:07
  33. We also don't find enough condemning from authorities, from mayors, from politicians.4:08
  34. Maybe they don't take the problem seriously.4:16
  35. Maybe they don't care, but we do know that the impact on the communities and on the people here is very hard.4:19
  36. From your perspective, what are the main drivers behind the recent rise in attacks and harassment targeting Christians in Jerusalem?4:27
  37. We defined two kinds of reasons, a background for the attackers.4:36
  38. Some do it for religious reasons.4:42
  39. We have some ultra -orthodox who present their resentment to Christianity that based on theology and history, and they usually the one who spit and when they pass me by4:44
  40. a church or a priest.4:56
  41. Then we have also a combination of religious extremism with nationalism, people who reject otherness within the Israeli society, within the people in the Holy Land.4:59
  42. For them, the Christian or the Palestinian or foreigner is someone that should not be here.5:13
  43. Therefore, they present that with verbal attack or spitting or something even worse.5:18
  44. We're talking about 4 % of the Israeli population who in the survey we did in September 2025, who said that they support this kind of incident.5:26
  45. So 4%, it's a very, very low percent.5:38
  46. It's very few people who involve in that, but the impact it has is very big because the community that lay people feel that if their priest is being attacked,5:41
  47. if someone is spitting on their priest, it's like if they're being rejected and pushed out from their homes, from the country.5:53
  48. So they feel uncomfortable.5:58
  49. They don't feel safe.5:59
  50. So either it's because it's a religious thing, pure religious, or it's combined with nationalistic attitudes for the Christian, it doesn't matter.6:01
  51. They feel uncomfortable.6:13
  52. They feel being rejected in their homes.6:14
  53. How is rhetoric playing into that?6:17
  54. Because we look at the current political climate.6:18
  55. There's certain rhetoric from certain politicians, I'm thinking from the far right.6:21
  56. How are you seeing it impacting interfaith relations on the ground as well?6:25
  57. So what we see in the last couple of years is polarization within the Israeli, within the society in the Holy Land.6:31
  58. So Jews, Palestinians, there's more pluralization.6:38
  59. There's more mistrust.6:42
  60. There's lack of interest in dialogue.6:44
  61. There's a lot of fear.6:47
  62. And I think politicians are using it.6:49
  63. One of the things that we analyze in our annual report at the Rossing Center is that this political and social climate encourage people to be more aggressive toward the6:51
  64. other and also more reluctant to come into dialogue.7:04
  65. So it could be an interfaith or Israeli Palestinian.7:09
  66. It's always have this both aspect, the national and the religious.7:12
  67. That's why we try to combine both the dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, but always relating to the religious aspect.7:17
  68. It's becoming more complicated when there's lack of interest, lack of trust, and from the politician and the authorities do not encourage it, but the opposite, they encourage more polarization.7:24
  69. Your organization works on both dialogue and education.7:35
  70. What practical steps could the Israeli government and law enforcement take to improve the situation for Christian communities and interfaith dialogue?7:40
  71. So we find that the two ways to change the situation, to change relationship between Jews, Christian, Muslim, Israelis, and Palestinians is first of all to bring people together, but7:50
  72. also to educate about each other.8:00
  73. One of the things that we notice that Israeli Jews know very little, and again, I will talk about my community, know very little about the other, about Christians, about8:01
  74. Muslim, about the religion, about the connection to the land, about their culture.8:10
  75. So you have to know something about the other before you come to meet with him.8:14
  76. And through that, you can build relationship and bridges.8:19
  77. And the authorities need to encourage that, encourage that by giving it a space.8:22
  78. Now we notice that civil society organization find that their spaces shrink and there's less place for this activity.8:27
  79. And we have to encourage the authorities to also to allow this space for these activities to happen.8:38
  80. We want to thank you so much for your time.8:47
  81. Hannah Bentkowski joining us from the Jewish -Christian relation, the Jerusalem Center for Jewish -Christian Relations at the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue in Jerusalem.8:49
  82. We appreciate your time.9:02
  83. Thank you.9:04

English listening practice with a DW News report on Christians in Jerusalem

This DW News clip gives you real english listening practice: a correspondent's narration threaded between short, unscripted interviews with an abbot, a monk and residents of Jerusalem's Christian quarter. The register sits at B2, and the pace of 163 words per minute is quicker than most of the material in this library, so you cannot coast through it. Ninety five lines make up the full clip, moving from the correspondent's framing sentences into raw, emotional testimony from people describing daily intimidation.

What is actually happening onscreen matters for how you listen. The report opens with the scale of the problem, then narrows into individual voices: an abbot describing being spat on and insulted on his daily walk, a young monk explaining why attacks now happen in daylight, residents saying they are afraid to speak publicly at all. None of these speakers are reading from a script. Their English is functional, sometimes broken, full of restarts and filler, which is exactly the kind of speech you need english speaking practice with if your goal is to understand real conversations, not textbook dialogue.

The language in this Jerusalem interview: hesitation, restarts and rare words

The interview subjects here are not native speakers performing fluency for a camera, they are people under stress reaching for words, which is why this clip is useful if you want to speak english fluently under real pressure rather than in a calm classroom exchange.

Take line 7: "Soldiers are spitting too, in uniform and this is you know, you know, people in uniform spitting on you, you know, whatever, whatever shall I say." This is not a clean sentence, it is a person searching for words in real time, repeating "you know" as thinking time while he decides how to finish. Line 11 works differently: "They're really spitting on me in the nighttime, you know, in dark alleys without eyewitnesses because they know if I attack the monk it's not accepted." Listen for how the stress lands on "nighttime" and "eyewitnesses", the words carrying the actual information, while the connecting phrases move fast and quiet. Line 24 is the opposite of both: "We are afraid because we are alone.", four flat words with no hedging at all.

  • Line 7, the abbot's tangled account of being spat on: "you know" repeated three times as a placeholder, not extra meaning.
  • Line 11, the monk's explanation: stress on the content words "nighttime" and "eyewitnesses", everything else said quickly.
  • Line 24, a resident's own words: "We are afraid because we are alone.", short, flat and complete, no hesitation at all.
  • Rare vocabulary later in the report, extremism, inciting, condemning, belongs to the political half of the story, not the interviews quoted above.

How to shadow this Jerusalem news clip line by line

Start english shadowing practice on the correspondent's lines before you touch the interviews, since narration at 163 words per minute is steadier and more predictable than the emotional, broken speech that follows it.

  • Lines 1 to 4: the correspondent's setup. Clean, complete sentences at full pace, use these to get your mouth moving at 163 words per minute before anything harder arrives.
  • Line 6, "Every day people spit in front of him and insult him.": a short, complete sentence, good for isolating rhythm and word stress on its own.
  • Line 7: slow this one down and repeat it several times until the "you know" hesitations feel like natural thinking pauses rather than something you are performing.
  • Line 11: shadow it once for the words, then again focused only on landing stress on "nighttime" and "eyewitnesses".
  • Line 24, "We are afraid because we are alone.": finish here and say it flat, the way it was said, without adding drama the speaker didn't add.
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