The international community should
investigate whether Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Gaza,
Pope Francis says in a new book excerpted in an Italian
newspaper Sunday.
"According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the
characteristics of a genocide," Francis says in the book "Hope
Never Disappoints. Pilgrims towards a Better World", to be
released for the Jubilee 2025 and of which the newspaper La
Stampa previews some excerpts today.
"It should be investigated carefully to determine whether it
fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and
international organizations".
The volume, edited by Hernán Reyes Alcaide (Edizioni Piemme),
will be released on Tuesday in Italy, Spain and Latin America,
and will then be published in various other countries.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says 43,846 people, many of
them women and children, have been killed in the Strip in an
Israeli assault since the October 7, 2023 attacks by the
Islamist militants in southern Israel which killed 1,200 people
and took 250 hostages in the worst slaughter of Jews since the
Holocaust.
In the book, the 87-year-old Argentine pontiff also says that
people are becoming inhumane in the face of today's migrations.
Faced with the challenge of migration, Francis says, "no country
can be left alone and no one can think of addressing the issue
in isolation through more restrictive and repressive laws,
sometimes approved under the pressure of fear or in search of
electoral advantages.
"On the contrary, just as we see that there is a globalization
of indifference, we must respond with the globalization of
charity and cooperation, so that the conditions of emigrants are
humanized".
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