(RNS) — The Israeli government has been working overtime to address the rage resulting from a documented video showing an Israeli soldier destroying a statue of the crucified Jesus that had fallen from a cross in a Lebanese village.
In a photo, the soldier is seen taking a sledgehammer to the head of the Jesus statue. Israel’s military reportedly pulled the soldier from combat duty and gave him a 30-day jail sentence, an acknowledgment of the harm internationally that the incident caused.
Unfortunately, this is not a one-off incident.
The Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land issued a statement condemning the desecration and insisted that “this was not an isolated incident,” citing previous reports of desecration. It demanded immediate disciplinary action and assurances against future acts.
Catholics and other Christians know from experience that continued failure of accountability and impunity are part of a pattern in Israel. Weeks earlier, a priest was killed in Lebanon, and during Palm Sunday the Latin Patriarch was denied entry to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem-based Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue released its 2025 report on attacks against Christians in East Jerusalem and Israel. The report highlights a 40% spike in documented cases of attacks on Christians in 2025, compared with 2024.
Those include 155 incidents against Christians with physical assaults — such as spitting, hitting and pepper-spraying — the most prevalent, accounting for 39% of the recorded incidents. In all, there were 52 attacks on church properties (including spitting on churches, graffiti, trespassing, damaging statues, arson and stone and garbage throwing), 28 incidents of verbal harassment and 14 instances of defacing public signs containing Christian content.
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Palestinian prisoners of all faiths have also complained of inhumane treatment in Israeli jails. The BBC reported that at least 94 Palestinian prisoners have died while in Israeli custody. Israeli prison authorities blocked a recent campaign by churches in the U.S. to show solidarity with prisoners by sending postcards to women prisoners. More than 1,000 postcards were mailed to a women’s prison in Israel but have never been delivered to the detainees.
Christian prisoners have been demanding for years the right to receive the sacraments in prison, and copies of the Bible have been regularly thwarted by Israeli officials, especially since the appointment of the far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir. After two years of persistent pressure by the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center, Israeli prison authorities announced that they would allow the Bible to be delivered but would continue to deny visits by a priest or a pastor. Criminal prisoners are allowed such spiritual visits, but Palestinian prisoners, many of whom have not been charged or tried, are denied.
The uptick in attacks on Palestinian and Lebanese Christians dwarfs the suffering of the broader communities.
The Israeli war machine reflects a deeper problem: The concept of Jewish supremacy, with enabling help from the U.S. and other Western countries, has intoxicated some Israelis into accepting perpetual war so long as they can stay alive in their shelters, allowing the army to annihilate the “enemy” that has been created in their minds by politicians, ideologues and loyal media.
In the West Bank, religious Jewish settlers are daily taking the law into their own hands. Attacking, destroying property and agricultural produce, stealing sheep and terrorizing communities have continued without accountability.
Char marks, which Palestinians say are from an attack by Israeli settlers, are visible in the cemetery near the St. George Greek Orthodox Church in the West Bank village of Taybeh, July 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Perhaps the most obvious case of repeated attacks is in the Palestinian Christian village of Taybeh. Jewish settlers repeatedly attack homes, destroy property and try to set fire to homes and churches. The situation became so dire that church leaders made an urgent call for diplomats to visit and see for themselves. In July, a large number of diplomats, including the pro-Israeli US ambassador, made a solidarity visit to Taybeh and spoke out against the lack of accountability for settlers attacking the peaceful village.
The attacks on civilians, denial of religious rights and large-scale destruction of homes are all collective punishments considered war crimes under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prescribes what military occupiers can do during war. Without serious accountability, follow-up and a credible investigation into alleged incitement in some religious schools, the attacks against Christians and other people of faith will not stop. Public relations gimmicks will not work, as the world has seen this pattern persist.
The European Union and the United States can no longer give lip service in denouncing these issues while innocent Palestinians and Lebanese are being killed, their property destroyed and their political and religious rights trampled on, often by leaders and their enablers who justify those acts as part of a divine calling.
(Daoud Kuttab is the senior communications officer of the World Evangelical Alliance. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
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