Defiling statues of Jesus: Israel’s counterfeit outrage at cultural vandalism

They have kept their strategy of cultural and institutional vandalism generously broad in recent campaigns against their adversaries.  It therefore came as something of a surprise that much febrile fuss was made about this month’s antics of an IDF soldier photographed attacking a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon on the edge of Debel with a sledgehammer.  Instead of its usual qualifications, haughty denials and coarse justifications, the Israel military accepted the veracity of the image and viewed the act “with great severity and emphasises that the soldier’s conduct is wholly inconsistent with the values expected of its troops”. The act even exercised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  He felt wounded at the deviancy of it all, claiming that “Israel […]