\n<\/p>\n
Footage of an Israeli soldier attacking a Christian statue depicting the crucifixion of Jesus in southern Lebanon with a sledgehammer was difficult for Israel\u2019s political establishment to ignore. The country has long tried to frame itself as a defender of Christians, and is allied with the powerful Christian Zionist movement in the United States.<\/p>\n
But as Israel continues to lose support in the US and the West for its genocidal war in Gaza and attacks in Lebanon and Iran, support among Christians has also dipped \u2013 even before the video of the desecration of the Christian statue surfaced.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Responding to the footage on Monday, a day after it first went viral, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed his regularly repeated line that Israel respects all religions, even as critics point out that his government regularly does the opposite.<\/p>\n But, with even some of Israel\u2019s supporters voicing anger at the soldier\u2019s actions, Israel announced on Tuesday that he had been jailed for 30 days, along with another soldier who had been filming him. Six other soldiers have been summoned for questioning.<\/p>\n The decision to pursue action against the two soldiers stands out because it is in marked contrast to Israeli military investigations conducted into violations by soldiers, which overwhelmingly find them not to have been at fault. In fact, no Israeli soldier has been charged with killing a Palestinian this decade, despite the thousands killed even outside of the Gaza war context, including the 2022 killing of Al Jazeera\u2019s correspondent in the occupied West Bank, Shireen Abu Akleh, who was herself a Christian.<\/p>\n Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow with Chatham House, noted that it was important for the Israeli government to ensure that its response to the attack on the statue of Jesus was visible, particularly in light of the important role Christian supporters of Israel \u2013 including the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee \u2013 play in the administration of US President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n Those supporters frequently justify their support for Israel by relying on Christian Zionist interpretations of the Bible, and emphasising a \u201cJudeo-Christian\u201d value system and shared cultural heritage.<\/p>\n But official Israeli action in this case makes inaction in other cases more glaring.<\/p>\n \u201cThis [attack on the statue of Jesus], and the attacks upon mosques by settlers and the killing of Palestinians are all war crimes,\u201d Mekelberg said. \u201cThe problem is that we don\u2019t know how widespread it is. We only know about this one because they filmed it.\u201d<\/p>\n Through much of the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, observers and analysts have pointed to the stark difference in Israeli government responses to attacks on Christian symbols and places of worship and what has been the large-scale destruction of Islamic sites.<\/p>\n In March, Netanyahu found himself having to explain the decision to block the passage of Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to mark Palm Sunday, one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar. Before the end of the same day, Netanyahu had posted to social media, explaining that there had been \u201cno malicious intent whatsoever, only concern for his safety\u201d.<\/p>\n Last July, Netanyahu again found himself apologising for a strike on a third church in Gaza following pressure from the Trump administration, when three of the hundreds of people sheltering there were killed and several others injured, including the parish priest who regularly spoke to the late Pope Francis.<\/p>\n In a statement issued through his office, the Israeli prime minister claimed he deeply regretted the strike on the church, which he said was an accident.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery innocent life lost is a tragedy. We share the grief of the families and the faithful,\u201d he said, without referencing the almost 60,000 men, women and Palestinian children his forces had killed by that point in the war.<\/p>\n Throughout the war, Israel\u2019s defenders have emphasised the concept of Judeo-Christian values in an effort to justify Israel\u2019s attacks and its repeated breaking of international law. But evidence of a shared civilisational bond is thrown into question by attacks on Christian symbolism, such as in Lebanon, and by Israel\u2019s long-standing treatment of Palestinian Christians, who face the same dispossession and occupation as their Muslim neighbours.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a lot of Israel\u2019s defenders in the West like to portray it as being \u2018us\u2019, just over there, as if \u2018over there\u2019 is some form of dark jungle,\u201d said HA Hellyer, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and senior associate fellow at the Royal United Service Institute.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, they can make excuses for Israelis killing Arabs in their thousands,\u201d Hellyer said. \u201cThey can even make excuses for them killing Christians. But when you see Israeli soldiers destroying Christian symbols, it becomes much harder to defend those actions and to stem the growing trend of US supporters, both Democrat and Republican, moving away from Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n While the Israeli government has been keen to preserve evidence of the Judeo-Christian bond, complaints of harassment by Christian groups within Israel are growing, particularly with the increase in strength of the Israeli far right, including in government.<\/p>\n In 2025, the interreligious Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue recorded 155 incidents targeting Christians in Israel, a marked increase from the previous year. While physical assaults were the most common, comprising 39 percent of incidents, there were also accounts of spitting, hitting, and pepper-spraying.<\/p>\n Christian holidays, specifically those around the time of Easter, have become particular sources of tension, the report noted, with priests and nuns wearing visible Christian clothing in West Jerusalem and occupied East Jerusalem facing the risk of harassment every time they enter public spaces.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve entered a period of what [Australian genocide studies scholar] Dirk Moses called \u2018permanent security\u2019, where anything different, anything that might be a threat, or could even be a threat in the future, has to be destroyed,\u201c prominent Israeli sociologist Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n That difference is inherent to the Christian faith.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not about left or right,\u201d Shenhav-Shahrabani explained. \u201cIt even goes to language. In everyday Hebrew, people refer to Jesus as Yeshu, which is a curse word, rather than Yeshua, which is correct.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s commonplace. That\u2019s how it\u2019s used in everyday media,\u201d he continued. \u201cIf that\u2019s where you begin, it doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s stupidity or ignorance, it all leads to the same place.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Footage of an Israeli soldier attacking a Christian statue depicting the crucifixion of Jesus in southern Lebanon with a sledgehammer was difficult for Israel\u2019s political establishment to ignore. The country has long tried to frame itself as a defender of Christians, and is allied with the powerful Christian Zionist movement in the United States. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
History of violence<\/h2>\n
What\u2019s next for Israel\u2019s relationship with Christians?<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"