Israeli soldiers sentenced to jail for damaging Jesus statue in Lebanon
by DAVID M. HALBFINGER · The Seattle TimesJERUSALEM — 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 in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military said Tuesday.
Other troops who stood by but did nothing to intervene, the military said, have also been summoned and could face disciplinary action.
The military replaced the damaged statue with a gleaming new sculpture of the crucifixion of Christ and released a photo of it.
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.
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 ceasefire with Hezbollah went into effect late last week.
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The photograph surfaced online Sunday, sparking widespread outrage in Israel and beyond, and demands for harsh punishment of the soldiers.
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 see Christian proselytizing as a threat.
The incident also prompted immediate and profuse apologies from Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its foreign minister, Gideon Saar.
In a statement Tuesday, Israel’s military expressed its “deep regret” and said that its chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, had condemned the incident as “a moral failure.”
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 “INRI” — Latin for “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”