The pope is right about Israel and Gaza. This is cruelty, not war

Pope Francis is a paradoxical figure.

Despite leading a church with a long, egregious history of being synonymous with strife, injustice and abuse, the old, ailing Argentinian Jesuit strikes me, at his core, as a modest clergyman who abhors human suffering and misery.

Like you and me, the pope can see what Israel has done with such ruthless ferocity to besieged Palestinians for more than a year in the barren, dystopian remnants of Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

I believe that Francis understands that bearing witness to human suffering and misery on an almost incomprehensible scale requires a response, that silence under the awful, prevailing circumstances means, at the least, blithe acceptance and, at the worst, conscious complicity.

So, to his credit, the pontiff has said what needed to be said.

The pope has, in effect, abandoned neutrality in favour of a raw, refreshing honesty to declare – with candid language – his sympathy for and solidarity with the millions of Palestinian victims of Israel’s relentless killing lust.

I am convinced that Francis will be remembered for having taken an honourable stand at the right time for the right reasons while so many other “leaders” in Europe and beyond have armed an apartheid regime with the weapons and diplomatic cover to engineer a still unfolding 21st century genocide.

Francis will be remembered, as well, for rebuffing efforts to intimidate or bully him to qualify or retract statements made from “the heart” that Israel is guilty of “cruelty” as it goes methodically about reducing much of Gaza and the West Bank to dust and memory.

Instead, bolstered by the truth and an apt sense of righteousness, the pontiff has refused to step back or “soften” his remarks.

The pope’s defiance is not only admirable but also tangible evidence that he does not intend to forsake Palestinians. So many charlatans have deserted them, claiming unconvincingly to be appalled by how many innocents have been killed and the gruesome manner of their deaths.

What have Pope Francis and the Vatican said and done to draw the apoplectic ire of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the accused war criminal’s legion of apologists at home and abroad?

Israel’s apoplexy began in earnest in February. The Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, denounced Israel’s so-called military campaign as disproportionate given the number of Palestinians killed suddenly under constant bombing or slowly due to starvation and disease.

“Israel’s right to self-defence must be proportional, and with 30,000 dead, it certainly isn’t,” Parolin said at the time.

Israel’s response was as swift as it was predictable. Agitated diplomats attached to Israel’s embassy in the Holy See issued a missive calling Parolin’s comments “deplorable”.

Yes, I agree. The truth can at times be “deplorable”. Nevertheless, it remains the truth.

Since then, of course, the “deplorable” number of Palestinian casualties has ballooned with more than 45,000 killed – mostly children and women – with another 108,000 or so wounded, often grievously.

Meanwhile, scores of Palestinians have endured forced marches to and from phantom “safe zones” in Gaza where they are bombed while seeking futile refuge in makeshift “homes” amid the rubble or freeze to death in flimsy tents engulfed by rain and mud.

Then, in book excerpts published by the Italian daily La Stampa in late November, the pontiff argued that a number of international experts found that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide”.

“We should investigate carefully to assess whether this fits into the technical definition [of genocide] formulated by international jurists and organisations,” the pope said.

Once again, Israeli officials reacted furiously, insisting that the pontiff’s remarks were “baseless” and amounted to a “trivialisation” of the term “genocide”.

The hyperbolic response was curious since the International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled near unanimously in January that South Africa had made a plausible case demonstrating that Israel has displayed the intent to execute genocide.

As a result, the court was required, by international law, to proceed with a full hearing and, ultimately, to render a decision on the question posed by the pope: Is Israel culpable for the crime of genocide in Gaza?

Amnesty International delivered its verdict in early December, concluding “that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip”.

Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, said Israel’s “specific intent” was “to destroy Palestinians in Gaza”.

“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” she added.

On reliable cue, Israel and its surrogates dismissed Amnesty International as a nest of anti-Semites in a pedestrian attempt to discredit its damning findings.

It is much harder to tar the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion Catholics with the same tired canard after he accuses you of “cruelty”.

In his Christmas address, Francis condemned the killing of children in an Israeli air strike a day earlier.

“Yesterday, children have been bombed. This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart,” the pontiff said.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Vatican’s ambassador for a stiff talking-to to convey, reportedly, its “deep dissatisfaction” with the pope’s blunt comments.

According to Israeli media reports, the meeting did not constitute a “formal reprimand”. I’m sure the Vatican was relieved.

What I find instructive is that the Israeli Foreign Ministry expressed its “deep dissatisfaction” with the pontiff’s justifiable use of a three-syllable word and not the fact that its marauding forces have killed 45,541 Palestinians and counting in a little more than 14 months.

In any event, I think the pope showed remarkable restraint. He could have described the grief, loss and anguish that Israel has wrought in Gaza and the occupied West Bank – without a moment’s regret or remorse – as obscene, abhorrent, or antithetical to decency and humanity, let alone the rules of “war”.

I suspect “cruelty” hit the sensitive mark because it is a stinging reflection of Amnesty International’s finding that Israel’s overarching intention is to mastermind the wholesale destruction of Gaza and the desperate souls whom it does indeed consider “sub-human”.

Israel’s “cruelty” is deliberate. It is not a “mistake” or the regrettable by-product of the unexpected vagaries of war’s “madness”.

Cruelty is a choice.

The unspoken dividend of that choice is that the perpetrator derives an intoxicating measure of satisfaction, if not pleasure, at exacting its uninhibited revenge on a largely defenceless people.

That is the essence of cruelty.

Pope Francis did not say that, but he might as well have.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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