In the judgment of Edith Bruck, the Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor who two years ago got the surprise of a visit to her home by Pope Francis, the pope “has no control over what he says.” In particular, over one word: “genocide.”
Bruck was referring to what Francis has said in an umpteenth book of his, previewed on November 17 in Italy by “La Stampa” and in Spain by “El País:” “I think of those who leave Gaza in the midst of the famine that has struck the Palestinian brothers in the face of the difficulty of getting food and aid into their territory. According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide. There should be a thorough investigation to determine whether it fits the technical definition formulated by jurists and international organizations.”
But that the word “genocide” should have mistakenly been let slip by the pope is contradicted by the facts. A year ago, on November 22, 2023, he met at the Vatican with some relatives of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, and already then, according to all those present, he defined as “a genocide” the attack on Gaza that had been underway for a few weeks. And an hour later, at the Wednesday general audience, he added on his own, departing from the written text, that “this is not waging war; this is terrorism.”
At the secretariat of state they tried to run for cover. “It is unrealistic that the pope should have spoken of genocide,” Cardinal Pietro Parolin said. But on May 10 of this year, Vatican diplomats found themselves scrambling again when in St. Peter’s Square, during a world meeting on the encyclical Fratelli tutti, the Yemeni Tawakkol Karman, the Nobel peace laureate in 2011, once again accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing and genocide.” This time no correction came from the Vatican.
Nor did one come today after this other sortie by Francis, which like those before came as a surprise, completely unbeknownst to the secretariat of state. Cardinal Parolin limited himself to commenting that “these things must always be studied, because there are technical criteria for defining the concept of genocide. The pope said what we have always reiterated.”
While on the other hand there are those who have read much more into the pope’s words, like the archbishop and theologian Bruno Forte, already very close to him back in the early years of this pontificate, who in an interview with “Corriere della Sera” said that it is right “to apply the definition of genocide to what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza,” if one sticks to how the United Nations defined it in 1948: “the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.”
In short, more than a verbal accident, that of Francis was a deliberate choice, with the determination of entering as a non-neutral protagonist into a dispute that lately has become ever more heated, both among Catholics and Jews, on to what extent and how Israel may be guilty not only of genocide, but also of ethnic cleansing, of “apartheid,” of oppressive colonialism, of crimes against humanity.
In the Jewish camp mention can be made of Anna Foa, an accomplished historian whose latest book, entitled “The Suicide of Israel,” earned her an extensive interview in “L’Osservatore Romano” on November 13.
Questioned after the pope’s sortie on genocide, she told “La Stampa” that Jorge Mario Bergoglio had expressed “a legitimate doubt” and that “even if it is not a matter of genocide, those tens of thousands of Palestinian victims in Gaza certainly amount to a crime against humanity.”
While with regard to “apartheid,” in the interview with L’Osservatore Romano she specified that this cannot be attributed to the state of Israel, despite the limitations imposed “on non-Jewish citizens,” but “if instead you go to the West Bank you find a regime that is very close to ‘apartheid,’” with settlers who lord over it.
It should be noted that two million Palestinian Arab citizens live within the borders of Israel, with their representatives in parliament, governments, the supreme court, and at the head of the country’s biggest bank, with prominent roles in hospitals and universities, as well as coexisting peacefully in large numbers in cities like Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem. None of them shows signs of wanting to emigrate in search of freedom to neighboring Arab countries. And Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence unequivocally affirms the equality of all citizens without distinction, an equality that cannot be impaired even by the highly criticized law passed in 2018 on the Jewish nature of the state.
As for the “perception of a colonialist Israel,” Anna Foa told the Vatican newspaper that “in real history, elements of colonialist initiative have not been lacking, starting with the first war of 1948, a ‘war of liberation’ for the Jews and a ‘nabka,’ disaster, for the Arabs. And no less in 1967 with the colonization of the West Bank and Gaza.”
Taking a step back, last May 7 even such a great expert on and friend of Judaism as the Jesuit of Jewish birth David Neuhaus had written in “L’Osservatore Romano,” in an article entitled “Anti-Semitism and Palestine,” that the nascent political Zionism in the 19th century “sought to ride the wave of European colonialism.” And this provoked criticism from the then Israeli ambassador to the Holy See, Raphael Schutz, in a letter that the Vatican newspaper refused to publish after having initially set it to be run, and that Schutz himself then passed on to several press outlets.
In the letter, Schutz argued that “colonialism is when an empire occupies a distant territory to exploit its resources, whereas Zionism concerned a persecuted minority that felt the urgent need for a place under the sun where it could be free, independent, and protected from persecution.”
Getting back to the reactions to the pope’s sortie on genocide, another voice in his support was that of Marco Tarquinio, for fourteen years the director of the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, “Avvenire,” and elected this year as a European parliamentarian for the Democratic Party. “The pope used a prudent formula,” he told the newspaper “il Foglio.” “I do not have grounds to say that the war in Gaza is a genocide, but it certainly presents itself as an ethnic cleansing.”
Highly critical, instead, was the Assembly of Rabbis of Italy, for whom “the pope’s words are apparently prudent, but risk being very dangerous. The word ‘genocide’ has become the slogan of all the anti-Israeli demonstrations, which often give rise to anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. […] The appeal for peace unites us, but the worst way to pursue it is to consider the blame unilaterally and to turn the attacked into aggressors or even bloodthirsty avengers.”
For his part, chief rabbi of Rome Riccardo Di Segni said in an interview with “Corriere della Sera” that he saw an “escalation,” a crescendo in the pope’s criticism of Israel, from October 7 onward, and “the reference to genocide is a new level” that even goes as far as to “overturn the roles,” because in reality “the genocidal intention belongs to those who attacked Israel on October 7,” as well as to Iran “with its plan for the total destruction — I repeat: total — of Israel.”
In Rabbi Di Segni’s judgment, “a regression” is taking place in the dialogue between the Catholic world and the Jewish world. A regression that is “serious” to the point of “paralysis” also for the great Israeli demographer Sergio Della Pergola, professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a summary of whose research on “being Jewish today” Settimo Cielo recently published.
Interviewed by “La Stampa,” Della Pergola said: “The pope is not expressing a doubt but taking a position, more or less explicitly guiding public opinion. He could at least add that the genocidal project of October 7, of which there are written plans, should also be investigated. Instead, no. It is sad. I see in this debate very serious omissions and a unilateral vision that forgets that Hamas and Hezbollah are not commonplace parties, but religious forces determined to establish the caliphate, and not Palestine.”
For Della Pergola, the pope’s sortie on genocide is another strike in that “communication war” which “Israel is losing.” The majority of Israelis, he says, “do not support the settlers and are dealing with an irresponsible government coalition,” but in fact “the hostility of Western public opinion helps none other than the extremists and props up the settler government.”
Moreover, Della Pergola makes a polemical reference to “those in the Church who asked the Jewish diaspora to distance itself from Israel, dusting off theses from pre-conciliar theology.”
The allusion is to the letter “to the Jewish people of the diaspora” written by Raniero La Valle, 93, a leading intellectual of progressive Catholicism, released last October with the signatures, among others, of two bishops, Raffaele Nogaro and “Pax Christi” president Giovanni Ricchiuti, of the pacifist Enrico Peyretti, of “Pro Civitate Christiana” president Tonio Dell’Olio, of “Missione Oggi” director Mario Menin.
Anna Foa too — whom La Valle in the letter calls an “authoritative Jew,” citing her book The Suicide of Israel — in the interview with “L’Osservatore Romano” had criticized “the European diaspora and the Italian one in particular,” which “prefers to remain silent and support Israel for better or for worse; it insists on the danger that Israel runs, and not on everything else, that is, on an absurd war.”
But La Valle goes further. For him, “the current conduct of the state of Israel smacks of genocide.” He quotes Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman in the Gospel of John: “Salvation comes from the Jews,” but to add right away that “our current experience and the tragedy of Gaza insinuate that what comes instead is perdition and the end.”
La Valle’s letter brought a reaction on November 4, on “Pagine Ebraiche / Moked,” the portal of Italian Judaism, from Professor Della Pergola. He maintained that it is instructive to quote a previous comment by La Valle on the massacre of October 7:
“On October 11, when Israeli troops had not yet entered Gaza, La Valle published an article that concluded with these words: ‘They [in Israel] cannot weep who contributed to today’s disaster by adopting and promulgating without hesitation the ideology of victory, heedless of justice and dependent only on force.’ Beautiful words of Christian charity in the face of women raped and butchered, infants with fingers severed, families burned alive in their vehicles, and homes sprayed with machine gun fire, and of the 250 deportees in Gaza’s underground tunnels. Israel’s retaliation had not even begun at that time.”
When instead, Della Pergola insists, “the genocidal component of Islamic fundamentalist ideology is completely ignored. La Valle should reread the beautiful text of the Hamas constitution with the article that calls on the good Muslim to “kill the Jew who hides behind every rock and every tree.”
And the pope? On November 20 he gave an audience at the Vatican to a delegation of the “Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue” of Tehran, and told them that the upcoming appointment as cardinal of the archbishop of the capital of Iran “honours the entire country.” In which “the Church is not against the government; to say otherwise is a lie.”
Not a word about the oppression of which Christians in Iran are victim. Much less about the stated goal of the Tehran government to annihilate the Jewish nation. But that’s how Pope Francis is. His words and his silences do not escape his control. They reveal who he is and what he wants.
Meanwhile, further inflaming the dispute, on November 21 the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, as well as for three Hamas leaders who have reportedly already been killed in combat.
The reason for the charge: “The Chamber considered that there are reasonable grounds to believe that both individuals intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies.”
That is, the very same “famine” to which Pope Francis referred in evoking genocide.
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POSTSCRIPT – On November 25, in his speech commemorating the 1984 treaty between Argentina and Chile, mediated by the Holy See, Pope Francis got in another dig at Israel, equating it with Russia as an invading country:
“ I mention two failures of humanity today: Ukraine and Palestine, where people are suffering, where the arrogance of the invader prevails over dialogue. ”
It should be noted that this passage of the speech, also addressed to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, corresponds to the official text distributed to those present, approved by the Vatican secretariat of state.
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(Translated by Matthew Sherry: traduttore@hotmail.com)
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Sandro Magister is past “vaticanista” of the Italian weekly L’Espresso.
The latest articles in English of his blog Settimo Cielo are on this page.
But the full archive of Settimo Cielo in English, from 2017 to today, is accessible.
As is the complete index of the blog www.chiesa, which preceded it.
