Haaretz newspaper observed a case of official hypocrisy in Israel, citing Tel Aviv’s condemnation of a soldier destroying a statue of Jesus Christ in southern Lebanon, while ignoring the atrocities committed by its soldiers against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
The newspaper reported on Tuesday evening that the Israeli army announced on Tuesday the suspension of combat duties for both the soldier who smashed the statue of Jesus Christ and another soldier who filmed the incident, along with their imprisonment for thirty days .
The decision did not include their discharge from military service, despite widespread condemnation and criticism around the world for the desecration of a Christian religious symbol.
Israeli leaders were quick to condemn the incident, “reflecting growing international scrutiny of the government’s relationship with Christians, following the incident in which the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem was barred from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to attend one of the most important Catholic celebrations on Palm Sunday,” the newspaper reported.
Since March 2, Israel has been waging an aggression against Lebanon that has left 2,454 martyrs, 7,658 wounded, and more than one million displaced, according to the latest official data.
The newspaper added: “Since October (2023), (Israeli) values seem to have become more flexible, as Israeli leaders no longer consider cases of misconduct by soldiers to be shameful.”
On the eighth of that month, Israel, with American support, began a two-year war of genocide in Gaza , leaving more than 72,000 martyrs and more than 172,000 wounded Palestinians, most of them children and women.
The newspaper continued: “During the war in Gaza, soldiers regularly took photos and videos of themselves and posted them on TikTok, Instagram and Telegram platforms.”
She explained that “the footage showed soldiers inside Gaza homes trying on residents’ underwear, celebrating the bombing, and posing for photographs next to vengeful graffiti or the bodies of dead Palestinians.”
She added that in the face of these atrocities, “no strong condemnations have been issued by Israeli leaders.”
She continued: “No condemnations have been issued since the release of a video showing soldiers abusing a Palestinian detainee in a military prison.”
On April 16, the Chief of Staff of the Army, Eyal Zamir, approved the return of these soldiers to service, despite the fact that they had sexually assaulted the Palestinian prisoner at the “Sde Teiman” military base.
Haaretz continued: “On the contrary, (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu described the leaked video (of the assault on the prisoner) as a propaganda attack against Israel and a terrible slander against the soldiers.”
Netanyahu himself has been wanted since 2024 to appear before the International Criminal Court for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza.
“In the West Bank, abuses by Israeli forces are not taken seriously unless they target American journalists, not Palestinians,” the newspaper reported.
She added that “Netanyahu’s policies rely on external enemies to gain blind domestic support, which puts him in the same league as despotic rulers around the world and throughout history.”
Since the start of the Gaza genocide, attacks by the Israeli occupation army and settlers in the West Bank have resulted in the martyrdom of at least 1,154 Palestinians, the injury of about 11,750, and the arrest of about 22,000, according to official Palestinian data.
Israel has occupied Palestine and territories in Lebanon and Syria for decades, and refuses to withdraw from them and allow the establishment of an independent Palestinian state as stipulated in United Nations resolutions.
