The Israeli military says that is now investigating a story that has rapidly gone viral around the world where one of its soldiers was photographed in southern Lebanon where I'll remind you they should not be swinging a sledgehammer at the head of a statue of a crucified Jesus that [00:00:16] had fallen off a cross. Symbolically, not good, not good. one of the incredibly well trained disciplined soldiers of the most moral military in the world. Just having some frat fun destroying [00:00:35] the symbol of the dominant religion of, was going to say their patron country, but I don't even know if it makes sense to call that anymore. Doesn't look good for Donald Trump, doesn't look good for the evangelical base that supports funding for Israel and all that. kind of seems [00:00:52] like he loved doing it. maybe he didn't think about the religious symbology of this entire thing. it was just, I'm in Lebanon, I want to destroy literally everything and I don't care what it is. Kill every man, woman and child, destroy every bill. Maybe it's just that, or [00:01:09] maybe it's not, I don't know. But either way, it certainly doesn't look good. Now the military has said that it has confirmed that the photograph is authentic and that the statue had indeed been damaged. But said it hadn't yet determined when the vandalism had occurred. Good, so you haven't locked down the least relevant part of the entire thing. Well, I guess for the [00:01:28] history books, we should know the date that they did this. But the fact that they did it seems kind of more consequential. So here is what Benjamin Netanyahu says. He says, as the Jewish state, Israel cherishes and upholds the Jewish values of tolerance and mutual respect between Jews and worshipers of all faiths. I'm going to need a citation on that, BB. But [00:01:48] anyway, All religions flourish in our land and we view members of all faiths as equals in building our society and religion. Bear in mind, he did begin that paragraph by saying as the Jewish state. maybe not like fully, maybe some animals are more equal than others. Maybe [00:02:05] two paws good, four paws bad. It's been a while since I read that book. But anyway, yesterday, like the overwhelming majority of Israelis, I was stunned and saddened to learn that an IDF soldier damaged a Catholic religious icon in southern Lebanon. I condemn the act in the strongest terms. Military authorities are conducting a criminal probe of the matter and will take [00:02:22] appropriately harsh disciplinary action against the offender. Yeah, but the weird thing is, of course, when he's the one committing crimes, the fact that there is a war going on is all it takes to put off all of the investigations. I guess for the soldier, they're to make a special dispensation. Anyway, while Christians are being slaughtered in Syria and Lebanon [00:02:40] by Muslims, the Christian population in Israel thrives. Unlike elsewhere, the Middle East. Israel is the only country in the region that the Christian population standard of living is growing. Israel is the only place in the Middle East that adheres to freedom of worship for all. We express regret for the incident for any hurt this has caused to believers in [00:02:55] Lebanon and around the world. Okay, so if you set aside all of the massive lies in that, the apology is sort of okay. And also uncharacteristic, we don't generally get Benjamin and Yahoo apologizing for much of anything that the IDF does. And it is not lost on me that this is a case when [00:03:17] he can apologize because one, this really could embolden some American Christians to rethink their support for the state if they don't come out hard against this. And also because it's a statue that was destroyed. You can acknowledge that. What if it's a school that's blown up? [00:03:34] What if it's a hospital that's blown up? What if it's a hospital that's bombed over and over and over again? What if it's an ambulance that is seen and then tracked. And then once they get to the scene of where you've already murdered or maimed civilians, the medics then get out and then you bomb and kill them. You'll notice that there are no apologies for that, because [00:03:54] this is a statue, statues are important, human life, who cares about that? You can kill literally thousands, not hypothetically, not hypothetically you can kill thousands of kids. They did kill thousands of kids and I would love to be wrong. Send me the tweets if they're out there. I've [00:04:13] never seen him apologize for any of that. And by the way, I don't want to be unfair. I don't want to have a double standard for Benjamin Netanyahu. I haven't seen Donald Trump or Pete Hex have apologized for killing the 1500 plus civilians that we've killed in Iran. I don't see them apologizing for killing all those kids. I don't see them apologizing for any of the [00:04:30] fishermen that we blew up in the Caribbean. So I guess it's just that's the standard thing now. You do horrible, evil, repetitive, nonsensical things, whatever. My God, this might imperil our funding, a statue. then we apologize for it. And again, I don't want to be dismissive, [00:04:47] I'm glad that he apologized for it. But it is literally the least evil thing I've seen out of the IDF in three years and that's the thing that they leap into action for? Okay, okay. Anyway, the actual substance of the relationship between Israeli military action [00:05:04] and Christians in the region might not be quite what Bibi portrayed it as. An annual report by the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue described 155 incidents involving attacks on Christians or Christians by the Israeli military, including 61 physical attacks on people, 52 [00:05:21] attacks on church properties. The most common expression of hostility was spitting at churches and clergy members, often in broad daylight, or even in front of police officers. And so look- Just be honest, just be honest that you can acknowledge that there's remaining religious [00:05:41] strife. You could even say, hey, this is a particularly fraught region of the world with a very complex religious history. But that's not the portrayal that he had. He had, hey, we're great everywhere else, those damn dirty, savage, disgusting Muslims, they slaughter Christians. Meanwhile, no, [00:05:57] we're totally cool. By the way, I just want to remind everyone, not that it matters, but in Gaza, 100 % of the population is not Muslim. They're Christians in Gaza. And I am pretty sure that when a building falls on a Christian in Gaza, it kills them as easily as it does [00:06:13] a Muslim. And again, no apologies coming out of Benjamin and Yahoo in that particular case. Anyway, supposedly the soldier has been identified. We'll see what if any of the consequences are for that. I do know that there are other people frustrated by this, including Marjorie Green. [00:06:31] said our greatest ally in quotation marks. See Donald Trump, that's when you use quotation marks in a tweet. Says that takes billions of our tax dollars and weapons every year. And some of it I guess is spent on buying sledgehammers to then destroy symbols of Christianity or [00:06:47] whatever. By the way, I also just want to read this because I think it's so timely. Donald Trump tweeted this I think yesterday. Israel never talked me into the war with Iran. If you are beginning a true social message with that. That is what happened. I am fairly certain [00:07:04] you would not be messaging that if you were not at the very least strongly concerned that people were reaching that conclusion on their own. But Israel never talked me into the war with Iran. The results of October 7th added to my lifelong opinion that Iran can never [00:07:19] have a nuclear weapon did. Okay, so that actually makes sense. October 7th, which happened uh literally years ago. and was tenuously at best connected to Iran. That's what convinced him to years later start a war with Iran. And also we can't let them have a nuke. I mean, they're [00:07:37] not going to and I already obliterate their nuclear capability, but I want a double plus mega ensure that they don't have one. That's why I decided to start the stupidest war in American history. And anyway, then he got just whining, whining about media coverage. He wants [00:07:52] so much credit on Venezuela. You know how you get credit for a great military operation in Venezuela? Don't follow it up with Iran. How about that? If you want us to be like, my God, that was so quick and so clean, just wham bam, thank you, ma'am, you got it done. Don't start a forever war with Iran afterward, because I don't care so much about that operation when [00:08:11] I'm seeing these operations. And others in the region, by the way, we're not gonna cover it like it's a full story. But did you see, so we've got CIA officers all over Mexico apparently, like- uh destabilize the cartels as a pretext to eventually invade northern Mexico, that's my suspicion. And two of them weren't at a massive raid, but they were returning from [00:08:31] it. And then their car swerved off a cliff and exploded and two intelligence officers died. Now if that's what actually happened, that's already terrible and didn't have to happen, he chose for that. But also I don't believe it. I don't believe that their car [00:08:49] exploded because it went off. We'll see, we'll see. But again, that's the sort of thing when you do these constant interventions that you're probably gonna end up with. Okay, story update. Thank you. I don't know if this was producer Mike, did you put that there? Maybe it was producer Ashley. The IDF announced that the soldier who destroyed the statue of Jesus in [00:09:05] Lebanon has been sentenced to 30 days in jail. Okay, 30 days in jail. I suppose I would want to know a little bit about the conditions of that jail. Is he going [00:09:22] to actually be in jail? Or is he going to be at Ghislaine Maxwell pat on the back jail? If he is actually, and then pardon, if he is actually going to 30 days in prison, I think that's reasonable. Am I crazy? I'm not a Christian or whatever. I don't think he should [00:09:40] be executed for it. And certainly the IDF does far worse things to living people than statues. I if they actually do that, I think that's reasonable. Can we get a Twitch poll? Is that reasonable or should it be more? Should it be less? I'm curious if somebody on Twitch could handle [00:09:56] that. Just because I don't know if am I being too lenient? Am I being too hard? I don't know.