Hezbollah Killed Israeli Dad by Firing From Lebanese Church

The terrorist group Hezbollah used a Lebanese church to launch an attack that took the life of a young Israeli soldier who leaves behind a wife and one-year-old child. Israel is not deliberately endangering Lebanese Christians, but Hezbollah is.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry announced the tragic news Tuesday about reservist Itamar Sapir. "Major Sapir leaves behind his wife, Roi, and their one-year-old son, Maayan. Terrorists hide behind places of worship while targeting Israeli soldiers. The world must stop looking away," the ministry insisted. While the U.S. and other countries demanded that Israel agree to a ceasefire with Lebanon, Hezbollah of course has completely ignored it, repeatedly attacking both the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli civilians.

Major (res.) Itamar Sapir, 27, was killed this morning in a Hezbollah terrorist attack launched from this church in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah once again turned a holy site into a terrorist stronghold - desecrating a place of worship, violating international law, and breaching… pic.twitter.com/2tLuBlS7Bl
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) May 19, 2026

Following the Oct. 7 atrocities, Hezbollah regularly rained missiles down on Israeli towns, sometimes destroying the majority of villages' structures. When reservist Dudi Lev, who was severely wounded by Hezbollah, spoke to PJ Media in October 2025, he described how missiles destroyed between 60% and 70% of buildings in his northern Israeli town of Metula. And Hezbollah continues to fight on behalf of its Tehran paymasters. Will there be any international empathy for Itamar Sapir and his family, or is the West too fixated on supporting Hamas and Hezbollah?

Israeli forces never deliberately target religious buildings, though they sometimes have to conduct operations close to those buildings or send soldiers to storm them because Islamic terrorists in the Middle East love to use churches and mosques as shields for their weapons stashes, terrorist bases, and missile-launching sites. So whenever you see that Israel supposedly hit a church, first check to see whether that actually happened (usually it’s a flat-out lie), and if it did happen, find out which terrorists were hiding inside the church. Every single time, you will find there is a lot more to the story than the antisemites want you to believe.

Let me use a recent example. At the beginning of May, social media antisemites were hysterical over the claim that Israeli forces had "demolished" a Christian monastery and school that the Sisters of the Holy Savior ran in Lebanon. IDF spokesman LTC Nadav Shoshani soon provided the real story, which was that Hezbollah was using the compound that includes the monastery and school for launching multiple missile attacks. Despite that, the IDF carefully protected the religious buildings from damage and was able to provide photos of the intact buildings.

This is why rhetoric like that from Pope Leo XIV condemning Israeli strikes on Lebanon is both ignorant and dangerous. The reason Lebanese churches and Christian communities are at risk is because Hezbollah is using and abusing them. If Israel were to eliminate Hezbollah from the region, Lebanese Christians would be infinitely better off. Their churches would once more become houses of worship instead of launching sites for deadly jihadi missiles.

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