{"id":129995,"date":"2026-04-25T17:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T15:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=129995"},"modified":"2026-04-25T08:15:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T06:15:25","slug":"28-05-116","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=129995","title":{"rendered":"Middle Israel: Jesus-statue smasher is product of Jewish fundamentalism – opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>Middle Israel: Jesus-statue smasher is product of Jewish fundamentalism – opinion<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

AMOTZ ASA-EL<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Unfortunately, what the IDF soldiers in Lebanon did when they smashed the statue of Jesus represents a syndrome much larger than the two young idiots they evidently are.<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

Here, the Israeli soldier damages the head of a statue of Jesus, in Debel, Lebanon, in this still image obtained from social media released on April 19. \/  (photo credit: SOCIAL MEDIA VIA REUTERS)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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It took one metallic sledgehammer, one narrow mind, and one smartphone\u2019s shocking photo to display the gravity of the problem we have come to face.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

The photo that showed a soldier axing a Jesus statue<\/a> in southern Lebanon was appalling enough \u2013 religiously and politically \u2013 but even more mind-boggling was the villain\u2019s frivolous attitude: post it on social media, so the whole world would see.<\/span><\/p>\n

The world indeed saw, and lost no time responding<\/a>, with intercontinental rebuke. Fortunately, the IDF summarily court-martialed the culprit and his photographer<\/a>, sending them to a military prison and removing them from future combat service. Unfortunately, what they did represents a syndrome much larger than the two young idiots they evidently are.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that syndrome is the very one with which Israel\u2019s worst enemies are plagued. It\u2019s called fundamentalism, and its bearers share ignorance of the outer world, impatience with history\u2019s course, and an inability to tolerate the existence of other faiths.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fundamentalist scourge reared its head in 2001 <\/strong><\/h4>\n
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THE FUNDAMENTALIST scourge was displayed in all its ugliness and brutality in 2001, when the Taliban had Afghanistan\u2019s Buddha statues hammered, axed, and dynamited.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

Taliban soldiers load ammunition in a vehicle, following exchanges of fire between Pakistan and Afghanistan forces, near Torkham border, in Afghanistan, February 27, 2026. (credit: REUTERS\/STRINGER)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThese idols have been gods of the infidels,\u201d said the iconoclasts\u2019 leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, referring to any Buddhist statue, but most famously to a pair of monuments taller than a 12-story building, carved into a sandstone cliff some 150 km. west of Kabul.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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Like all things fundamentalist, this atrocity was not about whim. It was about faith. Islam\u2019s founders destroyed hundreds of idols when they conquered Mecca, they said, so we must do the same.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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Non-fundamentalists say that what was done centuries ago in entirely different settings does not necessarily apply today, but fundamentalists disagree. To them, change is blasphemy. Restoring \u201cfundamentals\u201d and ignoring history\u2019s progress is what they are all about. That\u2019s their attitude toward the past, and also toward the future. And since the future, as they see it, will be all about their triumph over the rest of humankind, all others must bow, and since progress is anathema, change is a threat, and history is an aberration, they had better bow now.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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This is fundamentalism, regardless of its religious stripe. Early Christians were also once in the business of smashing images \u2013 that\u2019s how the term iconoclasm came into being \u2013 as were early Protestants, who broke into Catholic churches and did there what two Jews just did in Lebanon.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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Did Judaism originally wage war on idolatry? Of course it did, but that was when idolatry was murderous. That is why a great sage like Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Nasi, according to the Talmud (Avoda Zara 10b), could have a close friendship with a pagan like Roman Emperor Caracalla.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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Fundamentalists can\u2019t get this kind of interfaith harmony because they don\u2019t look outside the narrow, deep, and opaque trench in which they spend their days. To them, the outer world is barbarian, and otherness is a crime.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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And in Israel, fundamentalist ignorance has become in recent years a cultural embarrassment and a strategic threat.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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When Israel\u2019s finance minister exhibits his lack of spoken English, as Bezalel Smotrich did in a public speech, and when National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, in a taped quarrel with a foreign worker, can\u2019t utter even an eight-word English sentence, millions are embarrassed.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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Yes, such provinciality can be dismissed as anecdotal. That cannot be said of this duo\u2019s misunderstanding of the big world with which they are evidently unfamiliar.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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That is how Smotrich, as finance minister, can say of Wall Street\u2019s rating agencies, after they downgraded Israel\u2019s rating, that they are politically motivated. And when the finance minister does not understand how Wall Street works, he also does not understand what he does to Israel\u2019s international position by sending violent fundamentalists to the West Bank.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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At this writing, the identity of the iconoclasts who smashed the Lebanese statue is not known. Theoretically, they may have never visited a synagogue, studied in a yeshiva, or spent one day in a West Bank settlement. Yet even in this unlikely event, the fact is that thousands of Israelis do follow fundamentalist rabbis who feed them with triumphalism, hatred, and messianic zeal. And these people know precious little about the outer world in general, and Christianity in particular.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

Lebanon’s Christians are on our side<\/strong><\/h4>\n
THE SMALLER thing of which this week\u2019s two-cent crusaders were evidently unaware is that Lebanon\u2019s Christians<\/a> are on our side. That is why the particular village where they did their number, Debel, was not evacuated by the IDF. They resisted Hezbollah.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n
The bigger thing such thugs don\u2019t know is that Christianity<\/a>, led in this by the Vatican but joined by most other denominations, has long abandoned its forebears\u2019 antisemitism and cultivated a historic dialogue with the Jewish faith.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n
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This dialogue is part of what the Zionist dream was all about. It was never about domineering over other faiths, rivaling other nations, or fighting other states. For that, we could have stayed in the shtetl and the ghetto. The dream was to join humankind, not as superiors, but as equals. That\u2019s what ancient Judea\u2019s zealots didn\u2019t get when they canceled the Temple\u2019s daily sacrifice in honor of Rome, and thus ignited Jerusalem\u2019s destruction and Judea\u2019s grand defeat.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Not only was universal harmony part of the Zionist quest, but it was also part of the prophetic vision.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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That is why Isaiah, when he imagined the days to come, when the House of God will \u201cstand firm\u201d and \u201ctower above the hills\u201d \u2013 he saw it drawing not only Jews, but \u201call the nations.\u201d (Isaiah 2:2) And on that day, when \u201cmany peoples\u201d will \u201cgo up to the Mountain of God\u201d \u2013 they will no longer impose themselves on one another, because \u201cnation shall not take up sword against nation,\u201d and \u201cthey shall never again know war.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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www.MiddleIsrael.net<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

The writer, a Hartman Institute fellow, is the author of Ha\u2019Sfar Ha\u2019Yehudi Ha\u2019Aharon (The Last Jewish Frontier, Yediot Sefarrim 2025), a sequel to Theodor Herzl\u2019s The Old New Land.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n
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Middle Israel: Jesus-statue smasher is product of Jewish fundamentalism – opinion AMOTZ ASA-EL Unfortunately, what the IDF soldiers in Lebanon did when they smashed the statue of Jesus represents a syndrome much larger than the two young idiots they evidently are. Here, the Israeli soldier damages the head of a statue of Jesus, in Debel, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[33,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=129995"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130012,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129995\/revisions\/130012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=129995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=129995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=129995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}