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Comment by bitwank | Hacker News Reader

Is Israel firing into Christian neighborhoods? I think I saw something saying they were not. That seems consistent with Israel’s strikes being intended to target Hezbollah specifically (because Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel at the outset of the military operation in Iran).

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> Is Israel firing into Christian neighborhoods?

Yes.

“Lebanese Maronite Catholic priest Fr. Pierre al-Rahi, … was killed in this village in southern Lebanon during an Israeli artillery tank fire on a house March 9, 2026 … al-Rahi had earlier refused, along with other priests, to obey an order by the Israeli military to evacuate the Christian village of Qlayaa”

https://www.ncronline.org/news/lebanese-maronite-catholic-pr...

That's an exception that proves the rule. For the most part Israel is not firing at either Sunni or Christian villages. There is also more to this specific incident so people should research it.

Israel fired on, and killed, UN peace keepers. Multiple times.

I think they are hardly disciplined here.

Seriously, this again. In the middle of Hezbollah controlled territory there were firefights with UN peacekeepers ... and of course the people who did this "were IDF soldiers". Of course ... that's the explanation.

Does anyone still believe this? I mean, even if it's technically true, it is very well known Hezbollah sneaks as close as they can to UN bases, and then fires rockets at Israeli civilians from there, intentionally. And yes, I'm sure that this creates more than a bit of tension.

But even if that did result in a firefight ... it's not Israel that's responsible. Nobody seriously believes that.

"Technically true".... it's pretty clear that Israel has, on multiple occasions, fired at UN peacekeeping bases. This is not like "Heat of the moment" failures. These are established sites with UN peacekeepers who had been there for some time.

"Oops, our tanks opened fire on UN forces." Is a weird defense of it keeps happening. Once, maybe, but a healthy military would learn to stop that in the future. Mistakes happen. Repeated mistakes seem like a strategy.

https://www.bpr.org/npr-news/2026-04-03/not-our-war-say-chri...

This article references at least three Christian villages that were recently attacked.

Qlayaa, priest killed by shelling

Debil, dozen homes blown up over past couple of days alone

Alma al-Shaab, where an another priest says his brother was killed in an air strike a couple of days ago.

This article references 4 more:

https://nowlebanon.com/israeli-strikes-on-christian-villages...

“Aitou (is) the latest in a series of strikes on Christian-majority villages. Ehmej, Mayrouba, and Qatarba have been other recent targets”

That’s a total of 7 that I found in like 5 minutes of Kagi search of English language news.

Thanks. It seems a bit more complicated than I’d assumed. I probably should spend more time researching these things. I’d seen a BBC prince on the Christian section of Tyre and extrapolated. I had previously heard about the priest. I think these was one in Gaza as well. Such terrible, bloody times these are.

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