Pope Francis drew a harsh rebuke from the Israeli government after the head of the Catholic Church accused the Jewish state of attacking babies in the Gaza Strip. “This is cruelty,” the pope said on Saturday, per a CBS translation. “This is not war.”
“In response to the pope’s statement today: Cruelty is terrorists hiding behind children while trying to murder Israeli children,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry stated. “Cruelty is holding 100 hostages for 442 days, including a baby and children, by terrorists and abusing them.”
Pope Francis “unfortunately” opted “to ignore all of this, as well as the fact that Israel’s actions have targeted terrorists who used children as human shields,” according to the Israeli government.
“The pope’s remarks are particularly disappointing as they are disconnected from the true and factual context of Israel’s fight against jihadist terrorism—a multifront war that was forced upon it starting on Oct. 7,” the ministry stated.
“The death of any innocent person in a war is a tragedy. Israel makes extraordinary efforts to prevent harm to innocents, while Hamas makes extraordinary efforts to increase harm to Palestinian civilians,” it added. “The blame should be directed solely at the terrorists, not at the democracy defending itself against them. Enough with the double standards and the singling out of the Jewish state and its people.”
John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, which is part of the U.S. Military Academy, in New York wrote that he volunteers “to discuss with the pope what war is” and “what Israel has (protected civilians) and has not (bombed children) done.”
Spencer also said he would explain to the pontiff “how his message gives Hamas hope to keep fighting—protracting the war and suffering that Hamas wants, as well as St. Thomas Aquinas’s just war theory.”
Arsen Ostrovsky, a human-rights attorney and CEO of the International Legal Forum, wrote that the pope “is single-handedly ripping apart decades of work to repair Jewish-Catholic relations, by shamefully becoming a propagandist for Hamas.”
Earlier in the month, a nativity scene displayed in Vatican City, Rome, featured the infant Jesus clad in a keffiyeh. After an immediate backlash, mainly from Christian and some Jewish groups, it was removed.
