{"id":428591,"date":"2026-05-06T17:19:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/428591\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T17:19:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:19:18","slug":"lebanese-christians-offended-as-idf-soldier-smokes-with-virgin-mary-statue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/428591\/","title":{"rendered":"Lebanese Christians offended as IDF soldier &#8216;smokes&#8217; with Virgin Mary statue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Photos of an IDF soldier smoking while putting a cigarette in the mouth of a statue of the Virgin Mary surfaced on Wednesday, in the latest in a series of actions perceived as showing disregard for Lebanon&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/defense-news\/article-894239\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Christian<\/a> community.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The photo, KAN News reported, had been uploaded by IDF soldiers to social media and taken in the village of Debel sometime over the last day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The military told KAN that the incident was under investigation.<\/p>\n<p>In April, a soldier operating in Debel was photographed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/article-893761\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">smashing a statue of Jesus<\/a> with a hammer, raising widespread condemnation from Christian groups. The soldier, as well as the soldier who photographed him, were removed from combat duty and sentenced to 30 days in prison.<\/p>\n<p>The IDF attempted to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/middle-east\/article-893926\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">replace the Jesus statue<\/a> with a more ornate one, but the residents of the village instead replaced it with one identical to the smashed statue.<\/p>\n<p>The next week, another controversy erupted around the village of Debel when a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/middle-east\/article-894118\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">video was shared<\/a> in which Israeli soldiers are seen destroying civilian solar panels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photos of an IDF soldier smoking while putting a cigarette in the mouth of a statue of the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8742,4499,42,1031,956,88,43,40,38,41,39,191747],"class_list":["post-428591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-christianity","tag-christians","tag-headlines","tag-idf","tag-idf-soldiers","tag-lebanon","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-virgin-mary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428591","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=428591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}