(RNS) — In a Dec. 25 letter to Pope Francis, the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations joined other Jewish and Israeli leaders in criticizing the pontiff for comments he made in a Christmastime address condemning Israel’s most recent bombing of Gaza that resulted in the deaths of children.
In his Dec. 21 address to the Catholic Church’s cardinals, Francis said: “Yesterday, children were bombed. This is cruelty. This is not war.”
The IJCIC’s letter to the pope said in response that “Israel is engaged in a defensive war against jihadist terrorism following the brutal and unprecedented massacre perpetrated by Hamas on October 7,” and that it fuels the rise in antisemitism that Jews have experienced around the world.
As a rabbi who has been involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue for decades, including in the past as a member of IJCIC itself, I find the committee’s claims exaggerated and misguided.
The central question raised by the letter is whether or not the Israel Defense Forces are committing acts of cruelty in their war against Hamas in Gaza. The fact is, the continued bombardment of areas in Gaza that has killed and maimed civilians, including many women and children, almost every day since early October 2023 has long ago ceased to be a war of self-defense. The IDF has destroyed most of Hamas’ infrastructure by now. Yet the killing of innocents goes on and on.
These are certainly acts of cruelty and revenge, which deserve to be repudiated, as Francis has correctly done, and as many world leaders have done. Many people in the Israeli print and electronic media and in the country’s public square have also denounced these measures, and rightly so.
The pope has in the past condemned the massacres committed by the Hamas militants on Oct. 7 as acts of unspeakable cruelty. He has also hosted families of hostages at the Vatican and made it clear that the hostages should be released. It would have been better if he had done so again in his Christmastime statements, but this does not change the facts on the ground.
Pope Francis wants this war to end now, with all the hostages to be returned in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Most of the citizens of Israel, including myself, want this too, as does most of the security establishment of the state of Israel. It is the extremist and rejectionist government of Israel led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir that sees advantage in continued hostilities. They have begun to reoccupy Gaza militarily, are planning settlements there and have effectively abandoned the remaining hostages in Gaza (dead and alive).
Secondly, the IJCIC statement seems to imply that “moral clarity” means denouncing only the immoral acts of the Hamas terrorists but not those of the IDF, as if only terrorists commit immoral acts. The continual killing and wounding of so many innocent civilians are not acts of self-defense and cannot be justified as moral. Much of this has been done on purpose, as we learned recently from The New York Times’ recent comprehensive report. Israel has created a huge humanitarian disaster in Gaza, which is clearly unethical and for which Israel has no coherent plan for resolving it.
Equally concerning is the fact that the government of Israel has no plan for “the day after” to offer human and civil rights to the people of Gaza in the wake of forced displacement of most of the Palestinians who lived in northern Gaza, the mass destruction of homes as a method of war and the use of starvation and dehydration of much of the population. Both sides have committed many acts of cruelty and immorality, but the Israeli government and the IDF have undoubtedly committed many war crimes during this war, as have the Hamas terrorists.
The moral course for committed and concerned Christians and Jews at this time is to speak up to end this war now, redeem the hostages, exchange prisoners and restore stability and sanity to the citizens of Gaza and Israel.
Furthermore, to imply, in the face of all this, that the pope’s statements foster antisemitism, as the statement by IJCIC did, is astounding. Francis has denounced antisemitism countless times. One should be able to be critical of the policies of the government of Israel in this war and its terrible treatment of the Palestinians in general without being labeled as an antisemite.
Rather than accusing the pope and other world leaders of being unfair in their statements, as the IJCIC statement did and as ministers in the Israeli government are doing all the time, Jewish and Israeli leaders need to look inward and recognize the cruelty and immorality of some of Israel’s actions in this war. Denial and obfuscation will not suffice any more. We instead need to do our own soul-searching about how we treat others under our administrative responsibility, especially in times of war.
(Rabbi Ron Kronish is an interreligious peacebuilder, writer, blogger, author and teacher. He has lived in Jerusalem for the past 45 years. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)