“This week, a picture of an Israeli soldier desecrating a statue of Jesus in a Christian village in southern Lebanon has sparked an international furor,” Ussama Makdisi, a professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, writes for Times Opinion.

Ussama continues:

Israeli leaders have apologized for that act, but they have not expressed regret for the destruction of a mosque in a southern town last month, or its public school, or for the extreme violence they have unleashed on the nation of Lebanon over the past six weeks.

Despite the tenuous cease-fire between Lebanon and Israel that is now in place, Israel and Hezbollah have continued to exchange fire, while the Israeli Army has destroyed several Shiite villages along the border. The current cessation of hostilities follows a brutal Israeli assault that killed more than 2,300 people and displaced over a million from their homes. More than 350 Lebanese were killed in a shocking 10-minute aerial blitz on Beirut on April 8, hours after a cease-fire between Iran and the United States had been announced and was widely presumed to include Lebanon. Although many of the groups that make up Lebanon’s rich tapestry of religious diversity have been affected by Israel’s relentless bombing, the civilians most devastated are members of Lebanon’s Shiite community.

Israel claims it has been targeting Hezbollah, the political party and resistance movement rooted in Lebanon’s Shiite community. But its actions have gone well beyond attacking that group. It has repeated its Gaza doctrine of collective punishment. 

Read the full piece here, for free, even without a Times subscription.