You must log in or register to comment.
Pope Francis has triggered a backlash from Jewish groups who see his comments over the Israeli-Palestinian war as accusing both Hamas and Israel of “terrorism.”
The pontiff met Jewish families with relatives held hostage by Hamas, and Palestinians with families still in the Gaza Strip. He told an audience in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican City that he recognized suffering on both sides, saying: “This is what wars do. But here we have gone beyond wars. This is not war. This is terrorism.”
He couldn’t have made a more milquetoast remark about this war. For fuck’s sake…
Yeah, but he’s still being accused of shit by Israel for saying it…
Hell, there was a orthodox (very conservative) rabbi that had to flee his home in Israel, because he said the dead Innocents on both sides should be mourned.
Right wing Israelis showed up outside his house, and started throwing “fireworks” into his house in an attempt to burn him and his family alive for it. He ended up having to flee Israel because cops and the IDF wouldn’t do anything to keep the mobs away
He spoke out against Israels government, so Israels government wouldn’t do anything to protect him or his children.
It’s like KKK, yeah., they hated certain races/religions/sexualities, but there’s nothing they hated more than a straight white Christian who said they were going to far.
Above all else racists absolutely despise someone of their own race who pushes for bare minimum equality.
I don’t know if you’re thinking of someone else who experienced something similar, but it sounds like you might be describing Israel Frey. I don’t think he’s a rabbi, I think he’s a journalist.
But yeah, folks should look him up. Last i heard, he was in hiding.
Also, it’s indisputable that Israeli settlers are committing acts of terrorism. If one wants to argue that the IDF is committing terrorism, I’d agree with that too, but one cannot say that Israel is not committing terrorism when folks in balaclavas in pickup trucks are breaking into homes in villages and smashing everything and telling the families living there to move out the next day or be killed. And soldiers have been caught participating.
And soldiers have been caught participating.
It’s even worse. If the owners of these homes defend themselves, the IDF steps in… to defend the settlers.
And this is the big thing that people who say Israel is united in their attack overlook, all the moderates in the country are afraid to speak out. The Pope was right, they literally are a terrorist nation at this point.
The term the racists use for other members of their race who disagree with them is race betrayer. At least I’ve been called that by neonazis when arguing with them.
and yet it still somehow manages to be better than John Kirby’s quisling response …
He couldn’t have made a more milquetoast remark about this war. For fuck’s sake…
He’s the voice of moral leadership for millions of people. He’s not the CEO of Pepsi. Being frank about this is kind of his job.
I don’t think you know what ‘milquetoast’ means.
How so?
- be frank – to speak in a very direct or truthful way
- milquetoast – timid, meek, or unassertive, lacking in character, wishy-washy
Ohhhhh… I reread your comment. I thought you were asking for him to make a more muted response, and you were saying that his response WAS muted. Sorry, I get what you mean now.
Removed by mod
Shush, don’t be surprised if Israel finds “Hamas tunnels” in Vatican city and starts bombing it! And the whole media will defend it.
This got a very dark chuckle out of me. Thank you.
“Here we’ve gone beyond war. This isn’t war anymore, this is terrorism,” Francis told the crowd. “Please, let us go ahead with peace. Pray for peace, pray a lot for peace.”
He also asked for God to help both Israeli and Palestinian people “resolve problems and not go ahead with passions that are killing everyone in the end.”
Sourced from a different article. It’s an absolutely reasonable statement.
I seriously can’t fucking stand the organizations that don’t believe Isreal could ever do wrong… those folks are fucking assholes and destroy our ability to have reasonable conversations.
They often appeal to victimhood for nazism, but ironically their lack of critical thinking, criminalization of victims, tolerance of systematic ethnic discrimination and crimes would make them perfect nazis; they were just born in the wrong time and place.
I hate how MSN hosts other peoples’ news all the time.
Edit: The original article: https://www.newsweek.com/pope-francis-israel-remarks-spark-fury-1846567
Cheaper than writing your own news
“Israel remarks spark fury”
That’s all that’s needed, recycle this headline any time anyone talks.
Pope Francis has triggered a backlash from Jewish groups who see his comments over the Israeli-Palestinian war as accusing both Hamas and Israel of “terrorism.”
The pontiff met Jewish families with relatives held hostage by Hamas, and Palestinians with families still in the Gaza Strip. He told an audience in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican City that he recognized suffering on both sides, saying: “This is what wars do. But here we have gone beyond wars. This is not war. This is terrorism.”
At a news conference on Wednesday, representatives of Palestinians who met with Francis quoted him as using the word “genocide” to describe the situation. But Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni denied this and said in a statement: “I am not aware that he used such a word.”
On Monday 20 November, U.S. officials addressed claims of a genocide committed by Israel. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said: “Israel is not trying to wipe the Palestinian people off the map. Israel is not trying to wipe Gaza off the map. Israel is trying to defend itself against a genocidal terrorist threat.”
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) asked the Vatican to “clarify” what Pope Francis said.
In a statement on X, the AJC wrote it was “grateful” to Francis for meeting with hostage families but added: “Later in the day, he described the Israel-Hamas war as ‘beyond war,’ as ‘terrorism.’ Hamas’ butchering and kidnapping of civilians is terrorism. Israel’s self-defense is not. Vatican, please clarify.”
A statement from the Council of the Assembly of Italian Rabbis seemed to accuse Francis of “publicly accusing both sides of terrorism.”
It said unnamed “Church leaders” did not condemn the Hamas attack and said they were “putting the aggressor and the attacked on the same plane in the name of a supposed impartiality.”
U.S.-based Jewish human rights organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, wrote on its website: “It is important for one of the world’s primary faith leaders, for whom people of all faiths look to spiritual and moral guidance, not to forget that all those who came to speak and seek solace from him, all their suffering, all their loss, are on the hands of the Hamas terrorists who, on October 7th, inflicted in the most brutal way, the worst mass murder of Jews since the defeat of Nazi Germany and World War II.”
In a statement on X, the AJC wrote…
Taking to a platform run by an actual public antisemite to criticize the Pope for decrying mass civilian deaths really says something about where their moral attention is focused.
Genocide and terrorism are two different things. If someone is commiting a genocide, then the victims being terrified or not is pretty irrelevant. They’re not there anymore.
Conflating the two is silly and helps no one.
They’re not mutually exclusive.
Actually, they kinda are. Terrorism is about killing some people so you can influence the rest by fear. Genocide kills them all. If they’re all dead, how do you influence them with fear?
Am I missing something here?
edit: Do people think that any time someone blows up an innocent civilian, that’s an example of terrorism? If so, that’s a shitty definition. Terrorism is instilling terror into a population so you can push them into hurting themselves, usually because they’re too strong for you to defeat with more conventional military methods.
Both are happening, though.
I saw this article recently that argued that Israel is guilty of committing the international crime of apartheid on an ongoing basis, and that Israel is guilty of committing genocide to different degrees at different times, but that its actions might best be understood as a novel crime against humanity that could be called a “Nakba”.
The theory is that genocide was recognized as a concept following the Holocaust, and apartheid following the South African implementation, and what we’re witnessing challenges description because it has numerous novel elements that make it appropriate to view it as a case study in a form of not-yet-comprehensively studied ethnic violence.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/harvard-law-review-gaza-israel-genocide/
Yo that actually makes a lot of sense. And I guess it’d make sense as a crime name because Nakba is catastrophe in Arabic.
