Destruction of Jesus statue should serve as moral wake-up call for IDF, Israel |
On Sunday, an image of an Israeli soldier operating in Lebanon spread rapidly across social media.
It so perfectly encapsulated some of the worst tropes about Israel and Jews that many instinctively assumed it was an AI-generated product meant to slander the Jewish state.
Friends of Israel who thought the photograph might be real prayed it wasn’t, so damaging was the picture.
Their prayers went unanswered. An IDF soldier had indeed taken a hammer to the face of a statue depicting Jesus in the Christian town of Debel in southern Lebanon. There was no AI, no manipulation, no getting around an image that points to a deep moral morass in the IDF and in broader Israeli society.
It is hard to think of an image that could be more damaging to Israel on the world stage right now.
The emergent “woke right” in the US — led by figures like Tucker Carlson — contends that Jews are enemies of Christians, who are persecuted by Israelis in the Holy Land. Carlson has devoted multiple episodes of his popular podcast to speaking with local Christian figures about hardships imposed by Jerusalem.
The movement is working hard to convince Christian Zionists, the backbone of America’s support for Israel, that Israelis harbor a not-so-secret disdain for Christians, and that their natural allies are the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the political spectrum, Israel is cast as a uniquely cruel fighting force, going out of its way to destroy homes, lives and religious sites. All of this is done with a bizarre glee by IDF forces, say anti-Israel social media figures.
And, of course, there is the millennia-old charge of deicide, that Jews collectively bear eternal guilt for the death of Jesus on the cross. That accusation, which has led to the death of untold thousands of Jews, has been adapted in Palestinian liberation theology, which recasts Israeli soldiers as the Romans and Palestinians as their victim, Jesus.
What better evidence could all those camps ask for than a photo of a broken figure of Jesus, torn off the cross and hanging upside down as an emotionless Israeli soldier smashes him with a hammer?
The same army that killed tens of thousands in Gaza, and struck the only Catholic church in the territory, those critics can now say, is going out of its way to desecrate images of Jesus as it systematically destroys southern Lebanon as well.
As Jerusalem and Beirut wade into unprecedented peace talks, Israel has gone to great lengths to insist that its fight is with Hezbollah and its Shiite strongholds, not the Maronite communities in southern Lebanon that have worked with Israel since before its independence. But the image of the soldier destroying infrastructure in a Christian town, and a statue of Jesus at that, would seem to directly contradict the contention that Israel is not targeting Christians as well.
Most Israelis are rightly horrified by the incident, and the IDF and Foreign Ministry have denounced it in unequivocal terms. “Yesterday, like the overwhelming majority of Israelis,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “I was stunned and saddened to learn that an IDF soldier damaged a Catholic religious icon in southern Lebanon.”
Not an isolated incident
Although it is authentic, the image is not representative of the conduct of Israel’s soldiers, many Israelis have noted in the last few hours. Every large organization has a few bad apples, they point out.
But Israel and its leaders can’t be let off the hook by dismissing it as an isolated incident, involving a single soldier.
First of all, the soldier desecrating the statue is not the only guilty party. Another reservist took the picture, and soldiers don’t wander........