Using a sledgehammer, an Israeli soldier defaced a crucifix in Debel, a largely Catholic village in southern Lebanon.
The Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land expressed “profound indignation and unreserved condemnation of the desecration of a representation of Jesus crucified by an Israeli soldier in a Lebanese village.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he condemned “the act in the strongest terms. Military authorities are conducting a criminal probe of the matter and will take appropriately harsh disciplinary action against the offender.”