Pope Francis doubled down Sunday on his condemnation of Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip amid its war with Hamas, denouncing their “cruelty” for the second time in as many days after Israel accused him of “double standards.”
“And with pain, I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty, of the children being machine-gunned, of the bombings of schools and hospitals. What cruelty,” the pope said after his weekly Angelus prayer.
It was unclear which specific alleged incidents he was referring to. Israel has long said it only targets terrorists, and that Hamas hides among civilian populations to protect itself.
His latest comments come a day after the 88-year-old Argentine lamented an Israeli airstrike that medics said killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza, including seven children in one family. The IDF did not immediately comment on the airstrikes.
“Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war,” the pope told members of the government of the Holy See.
His remarks on Saturday prompted a sharp response from Israel’s Foreign Ministry, which said his comments were “particularly disappointing as they are disconnected from the true and factual context of Israel’s fight against jihadist terrorism — a multi-front war that was forced upon it starting on October 7.”
“Enough with the double standards and the singling out of the Jewish state and its people,” the foreign ministry statement said.
Pope Francis exchanges the season’s greetings with Vatican employees, in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, December 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
The war in Gaza was sparked by the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion and massacre in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 were seized as hostages as thousands of Hamas-led terrorists rampaged across Israel’s Gaza border communities.
Referring to the pope’s accusation of “cruelty,” the Foreign Ministry statement argued that “cruelty is terrorists hiding behind children while trying to murder Israeli children; cruelty is holding 100 hostages for 442 days, including a baby and children, by terrorists and abusing them.”
“Unfortunately, the pope has chosen to ignore all this,” the ministry charged.
Regarding the strike panned by the pope, the Israeli military told AFP it had struck “several terrorists who were operating in a military structure belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization and posed a threat to IDF troops operating in the area.”
It added that “the reported number of casualties resulting from the strike does not align with the information” the IDF has.
Israel has accused Hamas officials of repeatedly inflating Gaza casualty numbers.
Hardened tone
The mounting criticisms of Israel appear to mark a change in the pope’s tone in recent weeks.
Francis has consistently called for peace since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war more than 14 months ago, and has met frequently with the family members of those taken hostage and repeatedly called for their release.
However, a letter he wrote to Middle Eastern Catholics on the first anniversary of the attack never mentioned Hamas by name or made explicit reference to its atrocities, including the hostages. The letter also quoted passages from the Gospel of John that have historically been used to fuel religious antisemitism.
At the end of November, he went one step further and denounced “the invader’s arrogance” in both “Ukraine” and “Palestine,” breaking with the Holy See’s modern tradition of neutrality.
Members of the Palestinian embassy to the Holy See give a keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian scarf, to Pope Francis during a Christmas ceremony at St Peter’s Square at the Vatican, December 7, 2024. (Andreas Solaro/AFP via Getty Images via JTA)
In a book excerpt published last month, the pontiff said that some international experts had posited that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”
His comments were sharply criticized by Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, who said that they amounted to a “trivialization” of the term genocide.
The Jesuit had also criticized Israel for an “immoral” use of force in Lebanon after it launched an intensified offensive against the Hezbollah terror group in September, following almost a year of unprompted near-daily attacks on Israeli communities and military posts in the north of the country.
Since 2013 the Vatican has recognized the State of Palestine, with which it maintains diplomatic relations, and it supports the two-state solution.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 45,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
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