Is a video showing a statue of Jesus the Redeemer being erected on the Mount of the Cross in Al-Qaa, Lebanon, real? Yes, that's true: The video shows the installation of a statue of Jesus the Redeemer in the Lebanese village of Al-Qaa in the Bekaa Valley. Lebanese media reported that the statue was erected in March 2026 on Jabal al-Salib (Mount of the Cross), overlooking the Bekaa plain and the Syrian border. Several online detection tools rated the video as likely not AI-generated.
The claim appeared in a March 14, 2026, video posted on X account @_libanaiise (archived here). It opened:
The statue of Jesus the Redeemer now stands on Mount of the Cross in the town of Al-Qaa, overlooking the Beqaa Valley and part of Syrian territory.
Christ is King 🇱🇧
This is what the video looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @_libanaiise on X.)
The statue of Jesus the Redeemer now stands on Mount of the Cross in the town of Al-Qaa, overlooking the Beqaa Valley and part of Syrian territory.
-- K. (@_libanaiise) March 14, 2026
Christ is King 🇱🇧 pic.twitter.com/xzz8sTgD2d
The Al-Qaa municipality shared a post on March 14, 2026, on its Facebook page, with the caption:
Jesus the Redeemer on Mount of the Cross in the town of Al-Qaa, the statue of Jesus the Redeemer rises above the Bekaa plain and part of the Syrian territory, a symbol of faith and resilience over a land that has known pain and challenge.
The municipality also stated:
This statue was erected through the generous contribution of Mr. Fadi Elias Awad, in collaboration with the Al-Qaa municipality and several residents of the town.
Here is a screenshot of the post on Facebook:
(Image source: post by @KaaMunicipality on Facebook.)
Lead Stories also uploaded the image to Google's Gemini platform, which uses the watermarking tool SynthID to determine whether the video had been edited or generated using Google's AI tools. Gemini reported:
SynthID Analysis
The SynthID tool did not detect any Google AI watermarks in this video. While this means it was not created using Google's AI generation tools, it's important to note that SynthID cannot definitively determine if a video was created using AI tools from other companies.
A second tool, Hive Moderation AI-Generated Content Detection, concluded the video was "likely not AI-Generated" with an aggregated score of 0.0%. The higher the score, the greater the AI content:
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
A report on the statue's installation was published on the website OTV.com on March 14, 2026, with the headline, "A statue of Jesus the Redeemer rises on the Mount of the Cross in the valley." Another article was also published on March 7, 2026, on the website Charity Radio TV (archived here).
The website Annahar published an article on March 15, 2026 (archived here), about the statue with the video embedded in the post, as this screenshot shows:
(Image source: Annahar.)
