IDF condemns, investigates Israeli soldiers accused of desecrating Christian church in southern Lebanon

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that a recent incident in which Israeli soldiers allegedly desecrated a church in the southern Lebanese village of Deir Mimas is under review.

The IDF condemned the soldiers’ behavior on Tuesday.

Video footage circulating on social media shows several Israeli soldiers allegedly filming themselves inside a church in Deir Mimas, a Christian village located just a few kilometers from both the Israeli border and the town of Metula.

There are several churches in Metula, and it wasn’t immediately clear in which one the incident took place. The footage, apparently filmed by one of the soldiers, shows them playfully, and at times disrespectfully, enacting a Christian wedding in an Orthodox church.

One of the soldiers is heard singing, "oh Maria," in the style of a Christian choir. At one point in the video, a soldier shouts, “I object,” apparently referencing the common Hollywood cliché where a priest asks if anyone objects to the wedding.

🇮🇱🇱🇧☦️ WATCH: Israeli soldiers desecrated the Greek Orthodox Church in the Lebanese town of Deir Mimas, and made fun of the blessed Virgin Mary while conducting a homosexual wedding in the church as a 'joke' pic.twitter.com/OlSIswxiYi

— Reggie Meezer (@ReggieMeezer) November 26, 2024

The footage caused outrage among Israeli and Lebanese Christians, prompting the IDF to release an official condemnation of the incident: “This is a serious incident that is not in line with the values of the IDF and its orders. The IDF respects all religions and condemns such behavior. The incident is under review, and those involved face disciplinary repercussions.”

While some claimed the soldiers had “desecrated” the church, others noted that the soldiers engaged in disrespectful behavior, but didn’t desecrate, or even destroy, anything in the church, as far as the video footage in question shows.

“We demand a thorough investigation into the incident, and the punishment of the soldiers who desecrated the church in Deir Mimas,” said Shadi Khalloul, former IDF officer and president of the Israel Christian Aramaic Association (ICAA). 

“It's a disgrace, a behavior no different from the blasphemy committed by ISIS and the Shiites in Hezbollah. Everything that has been done in Lebanon for a whole year, these soldiers are destroying in this stupid wretched video. We demand that the Chief of Staff punish those involved and issue an apology on behalf of the IDF,” he wrote on 𝕏.

Wadie Abunassar, Coordinator of the Forum of Holy Land Christians, told Kan News that officials in the Vatican and in Europe asked him for information about the video.

“What would happen if such an event were held in a Jewish synagogue? They would shout ‘anti-Semitism’,” he added. “We expect there to be a comprehensive investigation and a strong condemnation of the event that disgraces the church and Christianity will be published.”

Abunassar added that some weeks ago, Israeli soldiers had entered a Christian home in southern Lebanon and broke Christmas decorations. “We dropped [the complaint] after an internal consultation,” he said. “Now we've decided that if we don't react this could continue, it's important for us to bring this to attention.”

On the other side of the debate developing online, Franck Salameh, a Lebanese Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Boston College, who often comments on Israeli-Lebanese issues, questioned whether the clip really showed “desecration.”

“Where do you see desecration in this clip? Lebanon’s Christians have been going through a well-publicized well-documented decades-long programmed derogation, emasculation, displacement, and plain erasure, and your trigger is bunch of clowns horsing around in a dubious clip,” he wrote on 𝕏.

In another tweet, he noted how “[Former Palestinian leader] Yasser Arafat turned the church of Damour into a pigsty; his heirs have instated a decades-long program derogating, emasculating, displacing & plain erasing Lebanese Christians, yet virtue-signaling Woke fashionistas get triggered by harmless adolescent hijinks in a dubious clip.”

Jonathan Elkhoury, a Lebanese-Israeli Christian whose family was part of the South Lebanon Army and fled to Israel after the IDF’s withdrawal in 2000, also condemned the incident.

“I really understand soldiers who want to relieve stress with jokes and humor during combat of course, but not in this way, not by insulting another's religion and certainly not by documenting and distributing it,” noted Elkhoury, who works with the Israeli Citizen Spokespersons’ Office, founded by former Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy.

“If someone were to enter a synagogue like that and mock a Jewish religious ceremony, we would call him anti-Semitic without blinking an eye. There is no harm to human beings in the physical sense, there is harm here to the feelings of the religious Christian public which is the Holy of Holies for them.”

“What the hell were those soldiers thinking, a year and a half after the start of the war when every picture and video they take is distributed around the world? Such an act must not be done, and certainly not be photographed and distributed,” Elkhoury said.