By Deutsche Welle
Nov 17, 2024, 18:12 PM EST
Pope Francis mentions accusations of “genocide” in the Gaza Strip for the first time and asked for an investigation, in a book about to be published and of which several fragments were released this Sunday.
A special UN committee published a report on Thursday in which it estimates that the methods of war used by Israel “correspond to the characteristics of a genocide.”
The report of this special UN committee, created in 1968 and in charge of investigating Israeli practices in the occupied Palestinian Territory, It will be presented on Monday at the General Assembly in New York.
“What is happening in Gaza, which according to some experts seems to have the characteristics of a genocide, should be carefully investigated to determine if it falls within the technical definition maintained by jurists and international organizations,” the Supreme Pontiff estimated in his text.
Your new book Hope never disappoints It will be released on Tuesday in Italy, Spain and South America. The extracts were published this Sunday by the Italian newspaper La Stampa.
Israel reacts: its offensive in Gaza is “self-defense”
The pope often refers to the extermination of Jews during World War II, to the “genocide” of the Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, of the Tutsis in Rwanda and of Christians in the Middle East.
Francis frequently laments the civilian victims in Gaza, but this is the first time he has publicly used the term “genocide” in the context of Israeli military operations in Palestinian territory.
The Israeli embassy to the Vatican reacted this Sunday to the publication of the fragments of the book and indicated that it had launched a “self-defense” offensive in Gaza in retaliation for “the genocidal massacre of Israeli citizens” perpetrated by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on October 7, 2023.
“Any attempt to call this self-defense by another name is equivalent to isolating the Jewish State,” the diplomatic representation wrote on the social network X.
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