The pope recently gave vent once again to his anti-Israel animus: “Pope Doubles Down on Criticism of Israel,” JNS, December 22, 2024:
The Pope, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide”…
No, those “international experts” (Francesca Albanese? Antonio Guterres?) to whom the Pope alludes as suggesting that Israel may have committed genocide are wrong. What is happening in Gaza is not genocide, but rather, an exemplary model of how to conduct urban warfare while minimizing civilian casualties. Consider how few civilians have died in Gaza as a result of the war. Hamas has claimed that 45,000 people have been killed in Gaza to date; it does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The IDF says it has killed 20,000 Hamas terrorists. In addition, before the war there were on average 800 non-combat-related deaths in Gaza each month from diseases and accidents.
Assuming that average monthly number remains the same, over the 14 months of war in Gaza, 11,200 deaths were attributable to diseases and accidents. When we subtract from the total number of deaths (45,000), both those of terrorists (20,000) and those that were non-combat related (11,200), we arrive at a figure of 13,800 civilian deaths. That means the civilian-to-combatant ratio of deaths in Gaza s 13,800: 20,000, or roughly 7:10. To put this figure into perspective, consider that the UN has said that in all the wars fought since 1945, the civilian-to-combatant ratio has been 9:1. In Afghanistan the Americans brought that ratio down to 4:1, and in Iraq, to 3:1. But no army in the history of warfare has come close to the roughly 7:10 ratio achieved by the IDF in Gaza. Who will let the pope know about this remarkable achievement by the IDF?
The pope wants to stretch the meaning of the word “genocide” to apply to conflicts where a large number of civilians have been killed, even if the requisite “intent to commit genocide” is absent. But with fewer than 14,000 combat-related civilian deaths in Gaza, can that war against the Hamas terrorists really be called a “genocide”?
Now the pope has taken to accusing Israel of “cruelty” for its actions in Gaza, where the IDF is fighting the terror group Hamas, that deliberately embeds its combatants and its weapons in civilian areas and. buildings, attempting to use its own civilians as human shields. […]
— Read More: www.frontpagemag.com
