A video showing an IDF soldier using a sledgehammer to smash the face of a Jesus statue in southern Lebanon went viral, initially dismissed as AI-generated propaganda but later confirmed as real, raising urgent questions about the Israeli military’s and Israeli society’s attitudes toward Christianity.
The incident was not isolated. It fits a broader, well-documented pattern of Christian churches being bombed, Christian clergy being killed, and Christian religious symbols being deliberately desecrated by Israeli forces in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank, with virtually no accountability.
Israeli media and American evangelical outlets like CBN framed the problem not as the act itself but as the bad optics of it being filmed, warning Christians not to “jump to conclusions” or engage in “cancel culture” by drawing meaning from it.
The real audience that matters to Israel in this context is American evangelical Christians, who remain the last large constituency in the United States supporting continued billions in military and economic aid to Israel.
The Pattern of Anti-Christian Actions by Israeli Forces
Since October 7, 2023, the IDF has bombed Christian churches in Gaza multiple times, shot and killed a mother and daughter in a churchyard with a sniper, and fired a tank shell specifically at a cross atop a church.
In every case, Israel denied responsibility, then called it an “accident” when confronted with evidence, and in no case was anyone punished.
In 2024, an Israeli tank in Lebanon bulldozed a statue of St. George slaying the dragon in a country with the last significant Christian population in the Middle East.
Israeli soldiers have filmed themselves inside churches mocking Christian rites in what amounted to a kind of black mass, then posted the videos online with no consequences.
In Israeli religious schools, the plus sign is not used in math because it resembles a cross; an inverted T is substituted instead. This practice is otherwise only documented in ISIS-run madrasas.
The Broader Context of Christian Persecution Under Israeli Occupation
A Jewish Israeli monitoring group documented 61 physical assaults against Christians, mostly clergy, in Jerusalem in 2025 alone. Christian priests are routinely spat on, roughed up, and some are afraid to go outside.
Poll after poll of Christian Arabs in the region identifies the Israeli government and West Bank settlers, not neighboring Muslims, as the primary threat to their safety and livelihoods.
Christians in the West Bank live under severe restrictions: gates between villages, inability to move freely, and constant harassment by settlers who are protected by the Israeli military.
The Christian population of Bethlehem has been shrinking for decades. Since October 7, 2023, at least 200 Christian families have left, a massive number given that Christians now make up less than 1% of the West Bank population.
Alice Kisiya’s Firsthand Account
Alice Kisiya is a Palestinian Christian born in Jerusalem with Israeli and French citizenship, living near Bethlehem. She has spent 15 years fighting to keep her family’s land and restaurant from being seized by settlers.
Her family’s house and restaurant were demolished four times. Each time they rebuilt. The land was ultimately taken over after October 7, 2024, when settlers invaded alongside police and the army, declared it a “closed military zone” using a forged military designation, and occupied it.
Settlers broke a statue of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus on her land, vandalized crosses, and destroyed icons. She has extensive video evidence.
Settlers stole her dog (she believes they killed it), choked her and her mother, and attacked her repeatedly. When she called the police, she and her mother were arrested instead of the settlers. She has been jailed multiple times for defending her own land.
She describes a web of corruption involving settler organizations, the Israeli Civil Administration, and private companies like Himanuta (a subsidiary of the Jewish National Fund) that forge land documents to steal Palestinian and especially Christian-owned land.
The companies exploit gaps in Jordanian-era land archives, filling in blank pages with fabricated purchase agreements dating to before such sales were legally possible.
Lawyers hired by Palestinian families are bribed or threatened into cooperating with settlers.
She says Christian Zionist organizations in the United States actively facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Christians from the West Bank by offering visas, job opportunities abroad, and relocation assistance, effectively helping to empty the land of its indigenous Christian population.
She notes that Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister and a key figure overseeing settlements, is openly hostile to Christianity and uses vulnerable Jewish youth from foster care and orphanages, brainwashing them in agricultural schools to hate Arabs and carry out violent land seizures.
Settlers come from the United States, Ukraine, and across Europe. Many are young people without family support, recruited and radicalized.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a Christian, sat near her at Christmas services at the Church of the Nativity but showed no interest in hearing about the suffering of local Christians or the war in Gaza.
No settler has ever been punished for attacking her or her family.
The Theological and Political Problem for American Evangelicals
American evangelical leaders provide unconditional political support to Israel, framing any criticism as anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, or part of “cancel culture.”
Figures like Mark Levin use platforms such as Fox News to lecture Christians on what the Bible supposedly teaches about violence, grotesquely inverting Christian doctrine to justify wars like the one in Iran.
The theology underpinning Christian Zionism, that God commands Christians to support the secular Israeli state, is itself deeply questionable from a Christian doctrinal perspective.
Israel uses American taxpayer money to fund policies many Christians would oppose: free abortion on demand, and the promotion of a large pride parade in the Dead Sea region this June, which the government claims will be the largest in the region’s history.
American evangelical leaders rarely speak directly to the Christians who actually live under Israeli occupation. Instead, they take government-sponsored trips to Israel, hear curated narratives, and return to preach propaganda to their congregations.
If American Christians were to learn the truth about how their co-religionists are treated and call their members of Congress to demand an end to funding, it could have an immediate effect, since bipartisan support for Israeli aid depends heavily on Christian Zionist voters.
