Selangor Journal
Pope Francis delivers a Christmas message to Vatican workers in Paul VI Hall at the Vatican on December 21, 2024. — Picture by REUTERS

Pope calls Gaza airstrikes ‘cruelty’ after Israeli minister’s criticism

VATICAN CITY, Dec 21 — Pope Francis today again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of Palestinians.

Francis opened his annual Christmas address to Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican’s various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes yesterday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.

“Yesterday, children were bombed,” said the pope. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”

The pope, as leader of the 1.4 billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian militant group Hamas.

In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide”.

Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli sharply criticised those comments in an unusual open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio yesterday. Chikli said the pope’s remarks amounted to a “trivialisation” of the term genocide.

Francis also said today that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip yesterday to visit Catholics there, but was denied entry.

The patriarch’s office told Reuters it was not able to comment on the pope’s remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.

Israeli officials were not immediately reachable for comment today, the Jewish Sabbath, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The war began when Hamas-led Palestinian militants attacked southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign, which it said is aimed at eliminating Hamas, has killed more than 45,000 people, mostly civilians, according to authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. The campaign has displaced nearly the entire population and left much of the enclave in ruins.

Israel said at least a third of the dead have been militants and that it tries to avoid harm to civilians but is battling militants whom it accuses of embedding among the population in dense urban areas. Hamas rejects this.

— Reuters

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