Israeli soldiers jailed for smashing crucifix statue in Lebanon after outcry

‘This act constitutes a grave affront to the Christian faith and adds to other reported incidents of desecration of Christian symbols by IDF soldiers in southern Lebanon.’

An image circulated on social media over the weekend of an Israeli soldier smashing a statue of Jesus in the Christian village of Debel in southern Lebanon.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed that the images are authentic and show an IDF soldier who was deployed in Lebanon.

Fr Fadi Felfle, parish priest in Debel, told Reuters that the cross was part of a shrine situated in a family’s garden on the edge of the village, and said: “One of the Israeli soldiers broke the cross and did this horrible thing, this desecration of our holy symbols.”

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the act, writing on social media: “As the Jewish state, Israel cherishes and upholds the Jewish values of tolerance and mutual respect between Jews and worshippers of all faiths … like the overwhelming majority of Israelis, I was stunned and saddened to learn that an IDF soldier damaged a Catholic religious icon in southern Lebanon.”

The US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister known for his Christian Zionist beliefs, had also condemned the act and said that “swift, severe and public consequences are needed”.

The IDF subsequently announced it had removed two soldiers from combat duty for the action and sentenced them to 30 days in military prison, a relatively rare punishment according to the conflict-monitoring group Action on Armed Violence, which has found that the majority of cases of misconduct in the IDF are not followed up.

The Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land, which includes the Latin, Melkite, Maronite, Armenian, Syriac and Chaldean Catholic Churches, expressed “profound indignation and unreserved condemnation of the desecration of a representation of Jesus Crucified”, in a statement signed by Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa.

“This act constitutes a grave affront to the Christian faith and adds to other reported incidents of desecration of Christian symbols by IDF soldiers in southern Lebanon,” the statement said.

“It further reveals a disturbing failure in moral and human formation, wherein even the most elementary reverence for the sacred and for the dignity of others has been gravely compromised.

“For believers, the Cross endures as a source of dignity, hope, and redemption, and as a summons to overcome violence through sacrificial love. It is precisely in this light that the Church continues to proclaim that true peace cannot be born of violence, but must remain, in the words of Pope Leo XIV, ‘unarmed … a peace that calls to put the sword back into its sheath.

“For this reason, the assembly renews, with urgency, its call to bring to an end the war that has tormented this region for far too long, and to embrace a path where peace is witnessed in restraint, dialogue, responsibility and reverence for the sacred and for every human life.”

Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) also condemned the act and expressed “solidarity with the local Christian community in Lebanon, which has already endured years of insecurity and instability”.

“Respect for religious symbols and places of worship is a fundamental principle, even – and especially – in times of conflict,” ACN said. “No circumstance can justify acts that wound the religious dignity of communities or show contempt for what is sacred to them.”

The charity invited “all to pray for the Christian communities in Lebanon and throughout the region” and called for “the protection of religious freedom and respect for what is sacred in every tradition”.

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