CNN
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Pope Francis has said allegations of a genocide in Gaza must be “carefully investigated,” in one of his strongest criticisms yet of Israel’s war in the territory.
“According to some experts… what is happening in Gaza has the hallmarks of a genocide,” Vatican News, the official news outlet of the Holy See, quoted the pope in a forthcoming book. “It must be carefully examined to determine whether it fits the technical definition formulated by legal experts and international bodies.”
Speaking about refugees, the Pope said: “I think especially of those who leave Gaza amid the famine that has struck their Palestinian brothers and sisters, given the difficulty of getting food and aid to their territory,” according to Vatican News. .
With few exceptions, most Gaza residents have been banned from leaving the area since the start of the war, but almost the entire population of more than two million people has been internally displaced.
The excerpts come from the book ‘Hope never disappoints: Pilgrims to a better world’, which will be published on November 19.
Responding to the report in Vatican News, Yaron Sideman, Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See, said that a genocidal massacre of Israeli civilians took place on October 7, 2023, referring to the Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and another 250 people were taken. hostage.
“Since then, Israel has exercised its right to self-defense against attempts on seven different fronts to murder its citizens,” Sideman wrote on X. “Any attempt to call the country by any other name is singling out the Jewish state.”
The 87-year-old pope is the latest of a growing number of international figures and organizations to label the Israeli military operation in Gaza as a potential genocide.
Israel is facing a case brought by South Africa at the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ), in which Pretoria accuses the Jewish state of genocide and says the Israeli leadership “intends to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza.”
Israel earlier this year rejected what it called the “strongly distorted” accusation of genocide leveled against it by South Africa, arguing at the International Court of Justice that its war was waged in self-defense against Hamas, and that it had previously focused on the militant group then targeted Palestinians as a whole.
A UN Special Commission report released Thursday said Israel’s war behavior in Gaza “is consistent with the hallmarks of genocide,” including massive civilian casualties and the use of famine as a weapon.
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last week accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, in one of his strongest criticisms of the country since the war began last year. The Gulf Arab state was close to normalizing relations with Israel before the October 7 war.
Pope Francis rarely comments on politics and often limits his comments to calls for peace. In March, he repeated his call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in his traditional Easter message at the Vatican, condemning war as an “absurdity.”
He called for an “immediate ceasefire,” access to humanitarian aid in Gaza and the “immediate release of the hostages.”
In December 2023, the Pope spoke about the deaths of two women killed by an Israeli sniper in the Holy Family Parish in Gaza. He complained that “unarmed civilians are being targeted by bombs and gunfire” in Gaza and invoked war scriptures.
Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, the health ministry there says, and has paralyzed large swathes of territory, creating a humanitarian crisis.
