Israel filed a formal complaint after the Vatican’s number two denounced the “carnage” in Gaza and what he described as Israel’s disproportionate military operation following the Hamas attacks on October 7.
The Israeli embassy in the Holy See described the comments of Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, as “deplorable.” In a statement on Wednesday, the embassy said Parolin had failed to take into account what he described as relevant facts in judging the legitimacy of Israeli actions.
Speaking on Monday, Parolin condemned the October 7 attacks by Hamas against Israel and all forms of anti-Semitism. But he also questioned the Israeli position that he is acting in self-defense by carrying out “carnage” in Gaza.
“Israel’s right to defense that has been invoked to justify this operation is proportionate and certainly with 30,000 dead it is not,” he said.
Israel has opposed the Vatican’s position on war before, including when Pope Francis spoke of “terrorism.” Francis, who speaks by videoconference every day to a parish in Gaza that hosts Palestinian civilians, has since tried to be more impartial in his comments and recently wrote a letter to the Jewish people in which he reaffirmed the special relationship between Christians and Jews.
In its statement of complaint about Parolin, the Israeli embassy accused Hamas of turning the Gaza Strip into “the largest terrorist base ever.” He added that the Israeli military acts in accordance with international law and that the ratio of Palestinian civilians to “terrorists” killed was lower than in other conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
But in a front-page editorial Thursday in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, titled “Stop the Carnage,” Vatican editorial director Andrea Tornielli reiterated the Vatican’s position. Tornielli cited a Rome-based Holocaust survivor, Edith Bruck, who has been highly critical of the Israeli government’s response, which he blamed for the rise in anti-Semitic incidents against Jews around the world.
“No one can define what is happening in the Strip as ‘collateral damage’ of the fight against terrorism,” Tornielli wrote. “The right to defense, Israel’s right to bring to justice those responsible for the October massacre, cannot justify this carnage,” he added.
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