{"id":403895,"date":"2026-04-21T19:30:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T19:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/403895\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T19:30:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T19:30:07","slug":"israeli-soldiers-sentenced-to-jail-for-damaging-jesus-statue-in-lebanon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/403895\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli Soldiers Sentenced to Jail for Damaging Jesus Statue in Lebanon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two Israeli soldiers have been pulled from combat duty and given 30-day jail sentences after one photographed the other swinging what appeared to be a sledgehammer at the head of a statue of Jesus<\/a> in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Other troops who stood by but did nothing to intervene, the military said, have also been summoned and could face disciplinary action.<\/p>\n

The military replaced the damaged statue with a gleaming new sculpture of the crucifixion of Christ and released a photo<\/a> of it.<\/p>\n

The extraordinarily swift administration of military justice by Israel was a tacit acknowledgment of the reputational damage the incident had done to the country, more than the seriousness of the crime.<\/p>\n

The incident occurred in Debl, a Christian village in Lebanon a few miles from the Israeli border. The village is in an area that the Israeli military seized as a buffer zone before a cease-fire with Hezbollah went into effect late last week.<\/p>\n

The photograph surfaced online Sunday, sparking widespread outrage in Israel and beyond, and demands for harsh punishment of the soldiers.<\/p>\n

Experts said the act of vandalism reflected both ignorance and a growing hostility to Christians among some Israeli Jews, who see Christianity as a form of idolatry or Christian proselytizing as a threat.<\/p>\n

The incident also prompted immediate and profuse apologies from Israel\u2019s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its foreign minister, Gideon Saar.<\/p>\n

In a statement Tuesday, Israel\u2019s military expressed its \u201cdeep regret\u201d and said that its chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, had condemned the incident as \u201ca moral failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Israeli military purchased the new statue and had erected it by late Tuesday. What had been a fairly humble-looking object of worship now was a shiny rendering of Jesus in silver- and gold-toned metal on a reddish-brown cross, beneath the familiar abbreviation \u201cI.N.R.I.\u201d \u2014 Latin for \u201cJesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Israeli soldiers have been pulled from combat duty and given 30-day jail sentences after one photographed the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[91410,85,46,88,43],"class_list":["post-403895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-defense-and-military-forces","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-lebanon","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403895","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=403895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}