The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations appreciates and shares the pope’s “concern for the suffering of innocent civilians and desire to spread peace and compassion around the world.”
But Pope Francis has gone beyond that and said troubling things about the Jewish state, Harriet Schleifer and William Daroff, chair and CEO respectively of the umbrella Jewish group, wrote to the pontiff on New Year’s Eve.
“We write in the spirit of this holiday season to express our concern over recent comments your holiness has made regarding Israel’s defensive war against Hamas,” the duo wrote. “Statements you have made including, ‘Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war,’ only serve to distort Israel’s legitimate military campaign and fuel antisemitism and unjust targeting of the Jewish state.”
The pope has failed to say that the Jewish state has a right to self-defense in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack or that the terror group uses human shields and embeds its operations among Gazan civilians, “putting the entire population of Gaza at risk,” the leaders wrote.
“With global antisemitism at record highs, the American Jewish community calls on you to refrain from making incendiary comments and to build bridges between our two peoples,” they added.
The Conference of Presidents, which is more than 50 years old, represents 48 Jewish organizations. It has another four adjunct organization members.
