{"id":777918,"date":"2026-05-06T19:13:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/777918\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T19:13:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:13:16","slug":"lebanese-christians-offended-as-idf-soldier-smokes-with-virgin-mary-statue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/777918\/","title":{"rendered":"Lebanese Christians offended as IDF soldier ‘smokes’ with Virgin Mary statue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photos of an IDF soldier smoking while putting a cigarette in the mouth of a statue of the Virgin Mary surfaced on Wednesday, in the latest in a series of actions perceived as showing disregard for Lebanon’s Christian<\/a> community.<\/p>\n

The photo, KAN News reported, had been uploaded by IDF soldiers to social media and taken in the village of Debel sometime over the last day.<\/p>\n

The military told KAN that the incident was under investigation.<\/p>\n

In a later statement, the IDF told The Jerusalem Post that the incident occurred weeks ago, but was only posted on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

In April, a soldier operating in Debel was photographed smashing a statue of Jesus<\/a> with a hammer, raising widespread condemnation from Christian groups. The soldier, as well as the soldier who photographed him, were removed from combat duty and sentenced to 30 days in prison.<\/p>\n

The IDF attempted to replace the Jesus statue<\/a> with a more ornate one, but the residents of the village instead replaced it with one identical to the smashed statue.<\/p>\n

The next week, another controversy erupted around the village of Debel when a video was shared<\/a> in which Israeli soldiers are seen destroying civilian solar panels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photos of an IDF soldier smoking while putting a cigarette in the mouth of a statue of the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":777919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8571,39495,4784,13850,99,13192,50,53158],"class_list":{"0":"post-777918","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-christianity","9":"tag-christians","10":"tag-idf","11":"tag-idf-soldiers","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-lebanon","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-virgin-mary"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116529227969863926","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}