Jerusalem, 16 September, 2026 (TPS-IL) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, joined by his wife Sara, attended a cornerstone-laying ceremony Wednesday for a memorial honoring fallen members of Israel’s Arabic-speaking Christian community, near the Golani Junction in the Lavi Forest.
Netanyahu used the event to reject what he called “a false and absurd global campaign” portraying Israel and the IDF as perpetrators of war crimes and persecutors of minorities, insisting Israel remains the region’s only place where the Christian community “flourishes and grows” rather than facing emigration, persecution, or slaughter elsewhere.
He cited Israel’s intervention in Sweida, in Southern Syria, to protect Druze civilians as further evidence of this role, and said the ceremony was meant to counter what he described as a repeated “big lie,” declaring: “Christians protect us! All of us, together.”
