The whole world remembers the international astonishment at the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan or the mausoleums of Timbuktu. In the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon, alongside the more than 44,000 deaths, the destruction and desecration of religious sites are massive, and the reactions timid.
« In Gaza today, God is under the rubble », affirmed in December 2023 the pastor of Bethlehem Munther Isaac. In early October 2024, a year after the outbreak of war, Gaza's Ministry of Religious Affairs announced that 814 mosques had been razed and 148 damaged, and that three churches had been wiped out in the besieged enclave. Among these buildings, in December 2023, the famous Al-Omari mosque, the largest and oldest mosque in the territory, formerly a Roman temple then a church, founded more than 1,400 years ago and which covered an area of 4,100 m². Its minaret had been destroyed a few weeks earlier.
Also in the Negev desert, the Israeli army chased a Bedouin community from its village last month and destroyed everything that could be destroyed, including a tiny mosque.
Destroy religious buildings, but also desecrate them. Many cemeteries have been destroyed for fourteen months wherever Israeli soldiers have operated. Sacred buildings are not left out. In the summer of 2024, for example, Israeli soldiers filmed themselves desecrating the Bani Saleh mosque, in the north of the Gaza Strip, and tearing up copies of the Koran.
Read more on RFI
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