Footage of an Israeli soldier attacking a Christian statue depicting the crucifixion of Jesus in southern Lebanon with a sledgehammer was difficult for Israel’s political establishment to ignore. The country has long tried to frame itself as a defender of Christians, and is allied with the powerful Christian Zionist movement in the United States.
But as Israel continues to lose support in the US and the West for its genocidal war in Gaza and attacks in Lebanon and Iran, support among Christians has also dipped – even before the video of the desecration of the Christian statue surfaced.
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Responding to the footage on Monday, a day after it first went viral, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed his regularly repeated line that Israel respects all religions, even as critics point out that his government regularly does the opposite.
But, with even some of Israel’s supporters voicing anger at the soldier’s actions, Israel announced on Tuesday that he had been jailed for 30 days, along with another soldier who had been filming him. Six other soldiers have been summoned for questioning.
The decision to pursue action against the two soldiers stands out because it is in marked contrast to Israeli military investigations conducted into violations by soldiers, which overwhelmingly find them not to have been at fault. In fact, no Israeli soldier has been charged with killing a Palestinian this decade, despite the thousands killed even outside of the Gaza war context, including the 2022 killing of Al Jazeera’s correspondent in the occupied West Bank, Shireen Abu Akleh, who was herself a Christian.
Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow with Chatham House, noted that it was important for the Israeli government to ensure that its response to the attack on the statue of Jesus was visible, particularly in light of the important role Christian supporters of Israel – including the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee – play in the administration of US President Donald Trump.
Those supporters frequently justify their support for Israel by relying on Christian Zionist interpretations of the Bible, and emphasising a “Judeo-Christian” value system and shared cultural heritage.
But official Israeli action in this case makes inaction in other cases more glaring.
“This [attack on the statue of Jesus], and the attacks upon mosques by settlers and the killing of Palestinians are all war crimes,” Mekelberg said. “The problem is that we don’t know how widespread it is. We only know about this one because they filmed it.”
History of violence
Through much of the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, observers and analysts have pointed to the stark difference in Israeli government responses to attacks on Christian symbols and places of worship and what has been the large-scale destruction of Islamic sites.
In March, Netanyahu found himself having to explain the decision to block the passage of Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to mark Palm Sunday, one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar. Before the end of the same day, Netanyahu had posted to social media, explaining that there had been “no malicious intent whatsoever, only concern for his safety”.
Last July, Netanyahu again found himself apologising for a strike on a third church in Gaza following pressure from the Trump administration, when three of the hundreds of people sheltering there were killed and several others injured, including the parish priest who regularly spoke to the late Pope Francis.
In a statement issued through his office, the Israeli prime minister claimed he deeply regretted the strike on the church, which he said was an accident.
“Every innocent life lost is a tragedy. We share the grief of the families and the faithful,” he said, without referencing the almost 60,000 men, women and Palestinian children his forces had killed by that point in the war.
Throughout the war, Israel’s defenders have emphasised the concept of Judeo-Christian values in an effort to justify Israel’s attacks and its repeated breaking of international law. But evidence of a shared civilisational bond is thrown into question by attacks on Christian symbolism, such as in Lebanon, and by Israel’s long-standing treatment of Palestinian Christians, who face the same dispossession and occupation as their Muslim neighbours.
“I think a lot of Israel’s defenders in the West like to portray it as being ‘us’, just over there, as if ‘over there’ is some form of dark jungle,” said HA Hellyer, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and senior associate fellow at the Royal United Service Institute.
“So, they can make excuses for Israelis killing Arabs in their thousands,” Hellyer said. “They can even make excuses for them killing Christians. But when you see Israeli soldiers destroying Christian symbols, it becomes much harder to defend those actions and to stem the growing trend of US supporters, both Democrat and Republican, moving away from Israel.”
What’s next for Israel’s relationship with Christians?
While the Israeli government has been keen to preserve evidence of the Judeo-Christian bond, complaints of harassment by Christian groups within Israel are growing, particularly with the increase in strength of the Israeli far right, including in government.
In 2025, the interreligious Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue recorded 155 incidents targeting Christians in Israel, a marked increase from the previous year. While physical assaults were the most common, comprising 39 percent of incidents, there were also accounts of spitting, hitting, and pepper-spraying.
Christian holidays, specifically those around the time of Easter, have become particular sources of tension, the report noted, with priests and nuns wearing visible Christian clothing in West Jerusalem and occupied East Jerusalem facing the risk of harassment every time they enter public spaces.
“We’ve entered a period of what [Australian genocide studies scholar] Dirk Moses called ‘permanent security’, where anything different, anything that might be a threat, or could even be a threat in the future, has to be destroyed,“ prominent Israeli sociologist Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani told Al Jazeera.
That difference is inherent to the Christian faith.
“It’s not about left or right,” Shenhav-Shahrabani explained. “It even goes to language. In everyday Hebrew, people refer to Jesus as Yeshu, which is a curse word, rather than Yeshua, which is correct.”
“That’s commonplace. That’s how it’s used in everyday media,” he continued. “If that’s where you begin, it doesn’t matter if it’s stupidity or ignorance, it all leads to the same place.”
