{"id":401541,"date":"2026-04-20T10:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T10:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/401541\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T10:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T10:58:12","slug":"israeli-army-investigates-soldier-seen-striking-jesus-statue-in-lebanon-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/401541\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli army investigates soldier seen striking Jesus statue in Lebanon | Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Israeli army has said it is investigating a soldier who was seen apparently striking a statue of Jesus with a sledgehammer in southern Lebanon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Israel<\/a> Defense Forces said they had determined that an image circulating on social media showing the incident was authentic. The image appears to show an Israeli soldier using a sledgehammer to strike the head of a statue of a crucified Jesus that had fallen off a cross.<\/p>\n

The sculpture is located in Debl, a Christian village in south Lebanon near the border with Israel, the local municipality has said. Officials could not say whether it had been damaged.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s army said in a post on its official X account on Monday that it viewed the incident with \u201cgreat severity\u201d and that the \u201csoldier\u2019s conduct is wholly inconsistent with the values expected of its troops\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cFollowing the completion of an initial examination regarding a photograph published earlier today of an IDF soldier harming a Christian symbol, it was determined that the photograph depicts an IDF soldier operating in southern Lebanon,\u201d the army said.<\/p>\n

It said the incident was being investigated by the army\u2019s Northern Command and was being \u201caddressed through the chain of command\u201d. \u201cAppropriate measures will be taken against those involved,\u201d it said. It did not go into further detail, only saying it was working with the community to \u201crestore the statue to its place\u201d.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, condemned what he called a \u201cshameful and disgraceful\u201d act. \u201cI am confident that necessary severe measures will be taken against whoever committed this ugly act,\u201d he wrote on X. \u201cWe apologise for this incident and to every Christian whose feelings were hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war in early March when the Tehran-backed armed group Hezbollah launched rockets towards Israel in support of Iran. Israel responded with massive strikes across Lebanon and an invasion of the south. Israeli troops have remained in the south despite a ceasefire between the two countries that began on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Israeli army has said it is investigating a soldier who was seen apparently striking a statue of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-401541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}