The pope's remarks are prominently featured in his new book "Hope Never Disappoints. Pilgrims Towards a Better World", which is set for release ahead of the 2025 Jubilee Year.

"According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of genocide" he wrote in extracts published on Sunday in Italy's La Stampa daily.

"This should be studied carefully to determine whether (the situation) corresponds to the technical definition formulated by jurists and international organisations."

The pontiff highlights the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, where Palestinians face starvation and a blockade on essential aid. Writing about the broader Middle East, he emphasises the plight of those fleeing conflict, particularly from Gaza, which he describes as suffering "famine" and systematic deprivation.

Pope Francis is usually careful not to take sides in international conflicts and prefers to talk of de-escalation. But he has stepped up his criticism of Israel's conduct in its war against Hamas recently.

Humanitarian ruin

The publication of the pope's remarks came soon after the UN said Israel's actions were "consistent with characteristics of genocide".

The UN report states that Israel has systematically deprived Gaza's population of life-sustaining resources like food, water and fuel, using starvation as a weapon of war. It also cites the dropping of over 25,000 tonnes of explosives, leaving the region in environmental and humanitarian ruin.

"By destroying vital water, sanitation and food systems, and contaminating the environment, Israel has created a lethal mix of crises that will inflict severe harm on generations to come" the Committee warned.

Israel says accusations of genocide in its Gaza campaign are baseless. It says it is solely hunting down Hamas and other armed groups.

"There was a genocidal massacre on 7 October 2023 of Israeli citizens and, since then, Israel has exercised its right of self-defence against attempts from seven different fronts to kill its citizens" said Yaron Sideman, ambassador to the Holy See.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis met 16 Israelis including former hostages and family members at the Vatican on 14 November. A few members held posters with the faces and names of men still in captivity. It is estimated that 97 of the 251 abducted on October 7 are still in Gaza. According to the Israeli Defence Forces, 34 of the 97 are confirmed dead.

Sources

Palestine Chronicle

Reuters

Our Sunday Visitor

CathNews New Zealand

Not here, in this dusty field strewn with dead people wrapped in blankets and zipped up in body bags. And not now, as Israeli airstrikes crashed around him for the third week, erasing more of his neighbourhood and sundering hundreds of families and friendships.

Yet on this October week in Gaza's central town of Zawaideh, the 22-year-old Palestinian photojournalist buried 32 members of his family who were killed in Israeli air raids last Sunday.

Dirawi's aunts, uncles and cousins from Gaza City had heeded Israeli military evacuation orders and taken refuge in his home farther south.

Days later, Dirawi was unloading their bodies from the back of a truck, digging a narrow trench partitioned with cinder blocks and reciting abbreviated funeral prayers before nightfall, when Israeli warplanes screeched, and everyone ran indoors.

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Tuesday's rocket strike left as many as 500 people dead and a great many others injured.

The hospital was a place of refuge for Palestinians following evacuation orders from Israel.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, expressed his profound sorrow at the incident.

"This is an appalling and devastating loss of innocent lives" said Welby, the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion.

Welby spoke out after first reports emerged that the hospital had been hit by an Israeli rocket. Palestinian officials had made that claim.

The Israeli military has denied the strike was theirs. They accused a Palestinian militant group of launching a rocket that malfunctioned then hit the hospital.

Neither report has been verified.

The Anglican hospital tragedy occurred after 10 days of intense conflict between Israel and Hamas. The latest conflict began with an assault on Jewish settlements by Hamas militants on 7 October.

Welby had previously called on the Israelis to reverse their demand for evacuating hospitals in Gaza.

"The seriously ill and injured patients at the Anglican-run Ahli Hospital — and other healthcare facilities in northern Gaza — cannot be safely evacuated," he warned in a statement on Sunday.

"They are running low on medical supplies. They are facing catastrophe.

"I appeal for the evacuation order on hospitals in northern Gaza to be reversed — and for health facilities, health workers, patients and civilians to be protected," Welby said.

Humanitarian corridors called for

On Sunday Pope Francis called for humanitarian corridors to help those under siege in Gaza, and again appealed for the release of hostages held by the militant Islamist group Hamas.

"I forcefully ask that children, the sick, the elderly and women, and all civilians do not become the victims of the conflict," he said at his weekly address to thousands of people in St Peter's Square.

"May humanitarian rights be respected, above all in Gaza, where it is urgent and necessary to guarantee humanitarian corridors to help the entire population," he said.

Sources

Religion News Service

Reuters

CathNews New Zealand

Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz tells SPIEGEL that her country is gripped by fear and is becoming increasingly suspicious of democracy.

SPIEGEL: There was widespread support in Israel for the operation in the Gaza Strip, despite the huge numbers of civilian casualties and the deaths of hundreds of children. Why is that?

Illouz: Where you see human beings, Israelis see enemies.

In front of enemies, you close ranks, you unite in fear for your life, and you do not ponder about the fragility of the other.

Israel has a split, schizophrenic self-awareness: It cultivates its strength and yet cannot stop seeing itself as weak and threatened.

Moreover, both the fact that Hamas holds a radical Islamist and anti-Semitic ideology and the fact that there is rabid anti-Arab racism in Israel explain why Israelis see Gaza as a bastion of potential or real terrorists.

It is difficult to have compassion for a population seen as as threatening the heart of your society.

SPIEGEL: Is that also a function of the fact that Israeli society has become increasingly militaristic?

Illouz: Israel is a colonial military power, a militarized society and a democracy all folded into one.

The army, for example, controls the Palestinians through a wide network of colonial tools, such as checkpoints, military courts (governed by a legal system different from the Israeli system), the arbitrary granting of work permits, house demolitions and economic sanctions.

It is a militarized civil society because almost every family has a father, son or brother in the army and because the military plays an enormous role in the ordinary mentality of ordinary Israelis and is crucial in both political decisions and in the public sphere.

In fact, I would say that "security" is the paramount concept guiding Israeli society and politics.

But it is also a democracy, which grants rights to gays and makes it possible for a citizen to sue the state. Continue reading

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Image: Al Arabiya News