Netanyahu claims Israel protects Christians after Israeli attacks hit churches in Lebanon
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Elis Gjevori
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Sun, 07/05/2026 - 21:09
The Israeli prime minister claimed Lebanese Christians want Israeli annexation, despite Israel’s attacks on churches and Christian sites
The image shows an Israeli soldier smashing a statue of Jesus on the cross in southern Lebanon. (Screenshot/@ytirawi/X}
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in an interview with Fox News on Sunday that Christians in Lebanon had asked Israel to “annex” their villages, many of which Israeli forces have damaged or destroyed.
Speaking on the pro-Israel US news outlet with host Jacqui Heinrich on "The Sunday Briefing", Netanyahu said “we…take care of our friends, especially the Christians in the Middle East”.
“Christian villages in Lebanon some of them have actually asked to be annexed to Israel because we protect them against Hezbollah fanatics who want to kill them and we do the same things with Christians everywhere…in the Middle East,” said Netanyahu.
But Netanyahu’s remarks sit uneasily beside Israel’s own record in Lebanon, where its forces have destroyed churches, damaged Christian religious sites and filmed soldiers desecrating Christian symbols.
The Israeli prime minister also made the comments just two weeks after his far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said "all of Lebanon must burn" in a social media post following the deaths of four Israeli soldiers in occupied southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu, who faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, offered no evidence that Christian villages in Lebanon had asked for Israeli annexation or protection.
He also offered no evidence that Hezbollah had targeted Christian villages. The Lebanese group’s main Christian ally in Lebanese politics is the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM).
Israel’s Christian problem
Netanyahu’s claim that Christians are calling for Israeli protection also came as Israel faces growing international condemnation for its attacks on Lebanon, including on the country’s Christian communities.
In May, the French organisation L'Oeuvre d'Orient said Israeli troops demolished a convent belonging to the Salvatorian Sisters, a Greek Catholic religious order, in the village of Yaroun.
In April, an image showing an Israeli soldier using a jackhammer to smash a statue of Jesus on a cross in southern Lebanon went viral on social media.
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Israel’s Chief Rabbinate later refused to condemn the soldier’s destruction of the statue.
Another viral video later showed an Israeli soldier in southern Lebanon desecrating a statue of the Virgin Mary.
Last year, Israel reduced the Melkite Greek Catholic St George Church in the southern Lebanese village of Derdghaya to rubble.
Israel’s attacks have not only targeted Lebanon’s Christian communities. In the occupied Palestinian territories, Jewish settlers have burned Palestinian Christian villages, while violence against Christian clergy and churches has escalated.
The attacks threaten to undermine Israel’s standing among one of its core constituencies in the US: evangelical Christians.
Later in the interview, Netanyahu claimed “it's not only the Christians in Lebanon who ask for our protection. It's the Druze, it's…the Sunni Muslims and quite a few of the Shiite Muslims too”.
He provided no evidence that any of those groups had asked for Israeli protection.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry says Israeli attacks have killed at least 4,304 people and wounded 12,203 others since Israel began its war on the country on 2 March.
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