Broken Statue Provokes Officials More Than 72,000 Palestinian Deaths
Video footage that circulated on Sunday showed an Israeli soldier using a pickaxe to smash a statue of Jesus in the southern Lebanese town of Debel — an act that triggered an unusually rapid response from Israel's highest levels of government.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was "stunned and saddened" by the incident, while Foreign Minister Gideon Saar labeled the soldier's conduct "grave and disgraceful." The Israeli army announced that both the soldier who destroyed the statue and the one who filmed it had been removed from combat duty and sentenced to 30 days of military detention.
Haaretz noted that the speed and severity of the official reaction reflects heightened international scrutiny of the Israeli government's treatment of Christian communities and sites — a sensitivity that has not been equally extended to Palestinian lives.
A Stark and Telling Contrast
The same officials who moved swiftly to punish the desecration of a religious statue have largely looked away from a documented pattern of soldier misconduct targeting Palestinians, Haaretz said.
Over the course of Israel's two-year military campaign in Gaza — where more than 72,000 people have been killed — soldiers routinely filmed and posted footage of themselves on TikTok, Instagram, and Telegram. The clips showed soldiers inside Palestinian homes trying on residents' underwear, celebrating bombings, posing beside revenge graffiti, and standing next to the bodies of dead Palestinians. While the army issued statements opposing such posts, senior officials declined to formally condemn them, according to the newspaper.
The contrast sharpens further in documented cases of alleged abuse. A video emerged showing Israeli soldiers sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman prison in southern Israel. Rather than condemn the conduct, Netanyahu dismissed the footage as "propaganda attack against Israel" and a "terrible libel" against the soldiers involved. On April 16, Israeli Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir approved the return to active service of the soldiers accused of carrying out the assault.
In the West Bank, the pattern repeats. On March 15, four members of the Bani Odeh family were shot and killed when Israeli forces opened fire on their vehicle in Tammun. The Israeli Justice Ministry unit responsible for investigating such incidents did not question a single officer involved in the killing, the newspaper reported.
The newspaper observed that misconduct by Israeli security forces in the West Bank only attracts serious institutional scrutiny when the victims are American journalists — not Palestinians.
"Less Empathy Than a Piece of Wood"
Haaretz did not hold back in its assessment of the political dynamic at play.
"Netanyahu's politics – and he has this in common with autocrats around the world and throughout history – rely on outside enemies for blind domestic support," Haaretz commented.
"Israeli leaders this week scrutinized behavior by a soldier that they themselves helped shape, conduct that would go unpunished if directed at the 'right enemies'. Those 'enemies' – flesh and blood, victims of abuse – receive less empathy than a piece of wood."
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