We Believe in Israel (WBII) feels compelled to respond to the recent remarks made by Pope Francis, which described Israel's actions in Gaza as "cruelty" and suggested the need to investigate accusations of "genocide." While the Pope's compassion for the suffering of innocents is understandable and commendable, his comments reflect a deeply troubling misreading of the situation—one that risks emboldening those who trade in terror and falsehood.
Israel’s defensive operations in Gaza are not acts of cruelty but an unavoidable response to one of the most heinous attacks in modern history. On October 7, 2023, Hamas militants slaughtered over 1,200 innocent civilians, including children, the elderly, and families, while abducting hundreds more. These were not acts of war; they were atrocities of unspeakable barbarity, designed to instil terror and celebrate death.
The Pope’s failure to explicitly condemn Hamas’s actions and its use of human shields is as bewildering as it is dangerous. Hamas does not simply place its military infrastructure among civilians—it thrives on their deaths, wielding their suffering as propaganda. Schools, hospitals, and residential areas in Gaza have been turned into launching pads for rockets and weapons storage. To ignore this is to grant impunity to those who deliberately weaponise their own people’s lives.
It is Israel, not Hamas, that values life. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) take extraordinary measures to minimise civilian casualties, including issuing warnings before strikes and aborting missions when non-combatants are present. These efforts are virtually unparalleled in modern warfare, yet they are rarely acknowledged by critics.
Pope Francis’s remarks are not just disappointing—they are reckless. They risk lending moral cover to those who seek Israel’s destruction and diminishing the moral clarity required to confront the true perpetrators of cruelty. They also fail to recognise the reality of Israel’s position: a nation surrounded by enemies who deny its right to exist and who revel in the shedding of Israeli blood.
The Pope’s suggestion that Israel’s actions warrant investigation for “genocide” is particularly egregious. Genocide is the systematic annihilation of a people. This label cannot, in good faith, be applied to a nation defending its citizens from an organisation whose stated aim is the eradication of the Jewish state. Such rhetoric cheapens the meaning of genocide and insults the memory of its true victims.
Israel’s war is not a war of choice; it is a war of survival. The Pope’s remarks, though perhaps intended as a call for peace, serve only to obscure the reality of a conflict that pits a democratic state against an ideology of annihilation.
We urge Pope Francis to reconsider his words and to use his immense moral authority to condemn unequivocally the terror and violence propagated by Hamas. True peace will only come when the forces of terror are confronted, not excused, and when Israel’s right to defend itself is acknowledged without equivocation.
We Believe in Israel stands firmly with Israel in its fight against terror and in its pursuit of peace, justice, and security for all. Anything less is not compassion—it is complicity.
