Israel’s military has launched an investigation after a photo circulated online showing a soldier desecrating a statue of the Virgin Mary in southern Lebanon.

The military said on Wednesday that it viewed the “incident gravely” and promised action against the soldier, according to The Times of Israel.

The outlet said an initial inquiry had found that the photo was taken in the Christian-majority village of Debel several weeks ago, though it was only shared online on Wednesday.

The photo showed the soldier placing a cigarette into the mouth of the statue while smoking one himself.

It is the latest in a series of incidents involving Israeli soldiers desecrating religious sites and destroying or looting property in southern Lebanon.

Last month, another soldier was photographed damaging a statue of Jesus in the same village. According to Lebanese media, Israeli troops have also bulldozed solar panels in Debel that supply the electricity needed for the town’s water system, and destroyed homes, roads and olive trees.

The incidents come as Israeli forces step up attacks on Lebanon, including the capital, Beirut, claiming they are striking Hezbollah fighters and infrastructure. Israeli forces also continue to occupy large areas of southern Lebanon and demolish entire villages in the area.

The scale of destruction has left Lebanese officials and residents increasingly worried that those displaced by the war will have nowhere to return to.

Concerns meanwhile have grown over Israel’s treatment of Christians in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.

Religious groups have documented a rise in harassment and violence against Christian pilgrims, clergy and Palestinian Christian residents, including assaults and spitting – often by ultra-Orthodox Jewish yeshiva students. This includes an assault on a French nun near Jerusalem’s Old City last month.

Video footage showed a man following the nun, forcibly pushing her to the ground, causing an injury to her head, then briefly walking away before returning to kick her as she lay on the ground, before bystanders intervened.

Israeli authorities have been quick to condemn such incidents when they attract global attention, though experts say action is typically taken only when episodes risk eroding US and international sympathy for Israel.

When footage of the attack on the nun surfaced, Israeli police announced the arrest of a 36-year-old man. And after the outcry over the destruction of the Jesus statue in Debel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office swiftly issued a condemnation.

The two soldiers involved – one of whom used a sledgehammer to smash the statue while the other filmed – were removed from combat duty and sentenced to 30 days in jail.

In March, Netanyahu’s office also offered apologies after Israeli police blocked Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa from reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to lead mass on Palm Sunday.

Israel’s decision to discipline the soldiers involved in the Debel incident stands out given how rarely military investigations find fault with the conduct of its troops. No Israeli soldier has been charged with killing a Palestinian in the past decade.

That is despite the killings of more than 72,000 people in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, most of them women and children.

Thousands more have been killed outside Gaza, including Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, a Christian, who was shot dead by an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank in 2022.

Israeli forces have destroyed more than 800 mosques in Gaza during the genocidal war, including the Great Omari Mosque, which is the strip’s largest and oldest.

The mosque’s 1,400-year-old minaret was destroyed, and its structure was also severely damaged.

Several churches have been hit as well, including the Saint Porphyrius Church, the oldest in Gaza and third-oldest in the world. (Al Jazeera)

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