An Israeli soldier took an axe to a statue of Jesus Christ in the Lebanese village of Debel on April 20, 2026. Netanyahu called it “stunning and saddening.” The IDF promised “harsh disciplinary action.”
Spare us.
This wasn’t an aberration. It was a photograph of something that has been happening — systematically, across three territories, for over two years — while Western governments that claim to champion religious freedom wrote checks to fund it.
Here is what Israel has done to Christians in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank.
Gaza: Every Church Hit, Christians Killed Inside Them
Gaza had approximately 1,000 Christians when the war started. Israel hit every single one of their houses of worship.
October 19, 2023: Israeli airstrikes destroyed buildings in the compound of the Church of Saint Porphyrius — the third-oldest active church on Earth, dating to the 5th century. At least 18 people were killed. Roughly 500 displaced civilians, mostly Christians, were sheltering inside. The church was hit again in July 2024, collapsing two more walls.
November 4, 2023: The Rosary Sisters’ school, part of the Catholic compound, was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike.
December 16, 2023: An IDF sniper shot and killed Nahida Anton, 70, and her daughter Samar as they walked between buildings inside Holy Family Church — Gaza’s only Catholic parish. Nahida was the matriarch of Gaza’s largest Catholic family. Samar was killed trying to carry her mother to safety. Seven more people were shot trying to help. That same day, Israeli tank fire hit the Missionaries of Charity convent, displacing 54 disabled people who depended on respirators to survive. Pope Francis called it terrorism. Israel denied responsibility. Israel’s Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem went on British television and falsely claimed there are no churches in Gaza.
July 7, 2024: An Israeli bomb hit the Holy Family Catholic School, killing four people sheltering there.
July 17, 2025: Israel struck Holy Family Church directly, killing three — including the parish janitor and an 84-year-old woman receiving psychosocial care — and wounding 10, including parish priest Father Gabriel Romanelli. The IDF’s own investigation confirmed the church was hit by a “misfired munition.” Italian PM Meloni blamed Israel directly.
According to local officials, Israel destroyed more than 1,000 mosques and three churches in Gaza. The 4th-century Monastery of Saint Hilarion — one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the Middle East, home to the first monastic community in the Holy Land — was damaged badly enough for UNESCO to place it on its World Heritage in Danger list via emergency procedure. A 5th-century Byzantine church at Mukheitim in Jabalia was converted into an IDF military base. The Palestinian Ministry of Culture reported 207 of 320 heritage sites destroyed or severely damaged.
Lebanon: Churches Bombed, a Priest Killed, Statues Bulldozed
October 9, 2024: An Israeli airstrike completely destroyed the 100-year-old St. George Melkite Catholic Church in Derdghaya, killing at least eight people sheltering inside. The church had previously been bombed by Israel in 1978 and 1992. In December, locals placed a Christmas tree in the rubble.
November 2024: Soldiers from the IDF’s Golani Special Operations Unit broke into an Orthodox church in Deir Mimas and staged a mock wedding — simulating intimate acts on the church floor, piling on top of each other, singing. They filmed it and posted it to social media.
November 18, 2024: Israeli shelling severely damaged the Greek Catholic Church of Saint George in Yaroun.
April 13, 2025 — Palm Sunday: An Israeli military bulldozer demolished Yaroun’s statue of Saint George on horseback. Video captured the act. No IDF comment.
March 9, 2026: Israeli tank fire killed Father Pierre al-Rahi, a 50-year-old Maronite parish priest in the Christian village of Qlayaa. He had rushed to help parishioners wounded by an earlier Israeli strike on a house. A second shell hit the same location minutes later. The day before, he’d told France24: “None of us carries weapons. All of us carry peace and goodness and love.” The same day, a 70-year-old Maronite farmer, Sami Ghafari, was killed by an Israeli drone in his garden in Alma al-Shaab. Israel said it struck “a Hezbollah cell” in a Christian village.
Father al-Rahi’s church had been damaged by Israeli attacks in 1992, 1994, and 2004. Father Ghafari later reported 90% of homes in his village had been destroyed.
Haaretz reported on April 19, 2026, that the IDF is systematically razing southern Lebanese villages during the ceasefire — 37 entirely wiped out — in a policy commanders described as “clearing the area.”
West Bank: Burning Down the Last Christian Village
Taybeh is the biblical village of Ephraim, where Jesus took refuge before his Passion. It is the last entirely Christian village in the West Bank. Population: 1,340.
Since the Gaza war began, Israeli settlers — operating under IDF protection — have encircled Taybeh with six outposts and launched wave after wave of attacks. In June 2025, settlers rampaged through the area, killing three in a neighboring village and setting fires at Taybeh’s entrance. In July, they set fire near the 5th-century Church of St. George, attempted to burn the Byzantine cemetery, destroyed olive groves, and spray-painted threats. In late July, they torched cars at 2 a.m. and graffitied walls: “You’ll regret it later.” In March 2026, 30 settlers seized a quarry two brothers had owned for 20 years, hoisted an Israeli flag, and held prayer services. Peace Now documented over 1,800 settler attacks in 2025 alone.
Father Bashar Fawadleh, Taybeh’s parish priest: “We feel that we are losing everything.”
Jerusalem: Freezing the Church’s Money
In August 2025, Jerusalem froze all bank accounts of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate — the institution representing half of all Palestinian Christians. The Patriarchate couldn’t pay clergy, teachers, or staff. Couldn’t operate its schools or charities. The Knesset itself sits on land leased from this Patriarchate. Simultaneously, settlers encroached on Greek Orthodox monastery lands near Jericho to advance settlement construction.
The Record
Netanyahu, defending Israel after the Debel photo, declared: “The Christian population in Israel thrives unlike elsewhere in the Middle East.”
The Christian population in Gaza is being exterminated. The churches of southern Lebanon are rubble. The last Christian village in the West Bank is under siege. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate can’t pay its priests. A Maronite father who carried nothing but “peace and goodness and love” was killed by a tank shell while helping the wounded.
That’s the record. Every word of it documented by the Vatican, the Latin Patriarchate, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, UNESCO, the Associated Press, Reuters, Haaretz, the IDF’s own investigations, and the testimony of surviving clergy.
The statue in Debel was not the crime. It was a photograph of the attitude behind all of it.