Anadolu staff<\/p>\n
21 April 2026\u2022Update: 21 April 2026<\/p>\n
A German Catholic aid organization on Tuesday condemned the destruction of a statue of Jesus by an Israeli soldier in southern Lebanon and encouraged the German government to pressure Israel to prevent similar incidents.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe condemn, in the strongest terms, the desecration of a Christian cross in southern Lebanon by an Israeli soldier,\u201d said Dirk Bingener, a Roman Catholic priest and president of Missio Aachen. \u201cWe hope that the Israeli government will fully pursue the promised investigation, take the necessary measures and issue an apology.\u201d<\/p>\n
The outcry followed the circulation of a photo showing an Israeli soldier smashing a statue of Jesus with a sledgehammer in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military confirmed the authenticity of the image on Monday and said it has opened an investigation.<\/p>\n
Bingener, who was visiting Egypt on Monday and met representatives of Christian minorities in the region, said they were concerned about the 5,000 Christian families in southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese families are currently cut off from the rest of Lebanon, and we do not know exactly how they are doing,\u201d he said. Bingener added that he received deeply concerning reports that houses are being deliberately demolished and land destroyed to make the area uninhabitable and prevent residents from returning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anadolu staff 21 April 2026\u2022Update: 21 April 2026 A German Catholic aid organization on Tuesday condemned the destruction…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43,180804],"class_list":["post-403579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-sitekeywords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403579","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=403579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}