The story of the IDF soldier who smashes the statue of Jesus on the cross in a Lebanese village is reverberating beyond Israel. One of those reacting strongly is the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Radek Sikorski, who links it to the fact that the IDF also killed Israeli hostages in Gaza. This has provoked a strong reaction from Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar.

Sikorski directs a scathing attack at the IDF over the desecration of the cross, even though there is no doubt that this was the soldier’s own act. He attributed the action to the training in the army.

“It is good that [Foreign] Minister [Gideon] Sa’ar quickly issued an apology; there was something to apologise for,” wrote Radek Sikorski on X. “That soldier should be punished, but one should also draw lessons from the way they are trained.”
“IDF soldiers themselves admit to war crimes. They not only killed Palestinian civilians, but even their own Israeli hostages,” Sikorski continued, with reference to the war in the Gaza Strip.

It is difficult to understand why Sikorski brings in the hostage situation in Gaza. Three hostages were killed by mistake by Israeli soldiers when they managed to escape captivity in December 2023. In September 2024, the IDF reported that three other hostages had fallen victim to bombing.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar reacts strongly to the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs linking the destruction of the Jesus statue with training in the IDF and accusing the IDF of war crimes.

He asks Sikorski to sweep before his own door. Last week there was an incident in the Sejm, the national assembly, in which a parliamentarian unfurled an Israeli flag in which the Star of David had been replaced with a swastika.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/polish-fm-says-idf-soldiers-admit-to-war-crimes-setting-up-clash-with-saar/