Pope Francis condemned Israeli airstrikes against Hamas in his annual Christmas address to the Roman Curia, the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican’s various departments, on Saturday. 

“Yesterday, children were bombed,” said the pope. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”

The Hamas-run Health Ministry claimed that Israeli airstrikes killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza on Friday. The Israeli military told AFP it had struck “several terrorists who were operating in a military structure belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization and posed a threat to IDF troops operating in the area”.

“According to an initial examination, the reported number of casualties resulting from the strike does not align with the information held by the IDF,” it added.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry criticized the pope’s remarks, saying they were “particularly disappointing as they are disconnected from the true and factual context of Israel’s fight against jihadist terrorism —- a multi-front war that was forced upon it starting on October 7.”

“Enough with the double standards and the singling out of the Jewish state and its people,” the ministry said.

“Cruelty is terrorists hiding behind children while trying to murder Israeli children; cruelty is holding 100 hostages for 442 days, including a baby and children, by terrorists and abusing them. Unfortunately, the Pope has chosen to ignore all of this,” the ministry said.

The Pope’s comments come one day after Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli criticized the pontiff for suggesting the international community should study whether Israel’s military offensive in Gaza constitutes a “genocide” of the Palestinian people.

“As a people who lost six million of its sons and daughters in the Holocaust, we are particularly sensitive to the trivialization of the term ‘genocide’ — a trivialization that comes dangerously close to Holocaust denial,” Chikli wrote.

Chikli has been highly critical of the Pope lately for his call to investigate Israel on charges of genocide.

“As a nation that lost six million of its sons and daughters in the Holocaust, we are especially sensitive to the trivialization of the term “genocide” – a trivialization that is dangerously close to Holocaust denial,” Chikli tweeted. 

He also criticized Pope Francis for his unveiling of a nativity scene featuring baby Jesus swaddled in as keffiyeh, a symbol of Palestinian anti-Jewish terrorism. 

It is a well-known fact that Jesus was born in the city of Bethlehem, as described in Chapter 2 of the Gospel according to Matthew,” Chikli wrote. “Bethlehem is the same city where Rachel, our matriarch, died giving birth to Benjamin. It is also the same city in the northern part of the territory of the Tribe of Judah, where David, son of Jesse from Bethlehem, was born. David became the King of Israel, making Jerusalem its capital and building the altar on Mount Moriah, upon which Solomon, his son, later built the Temple.”

While Islam reveres Jesus as a non-divine prophet of Mohammad, the “Palestinian” movement has rewritten history, portraying Jesus as a Palestinian. It is believed that the credo was an invention of Yasser Arafat’s adviser Hanan Ashrawi, a Christian, who said in an interview with the Washington Jewish Week on February 22, 2001, that “Jesus was a Palestinian.”

This became the official PLO platform as evidenced by their frequent reference to Jesus as “the first Palestinian martyr” and whose annual Christmas statement reads, “Every Christmas, Palestine celebrates the birth of one of its own: Jesus.”

At a Christmas ceremony in 2019, Dr. Mohammad Shtayyeh, the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, referred to Jesus as “a Palestinian guerrilla fighter.”

The narrative was incorporated into Christian theology, depicting Jesus as a secular Social Justice Warrior fighting the “Occupation”.  “Liberation Theology” is a twist on classical Christian belief, attempting to base Palestinian resistance to Israel as well as Palestinian national aspirations in the Christian Gospel.  It includes an intense valorization of Palestinian ethnic and cultural identity as guarantors of a more accurate grasp of the gospel because they are the true inhabitants of the land of Jesus and the Bible. Liberation Theology defines Jesus as a Palestinian living under Israeli occupation. It defines Christianity as a human rights movement. 

Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics but was denied entry.

The pope has been criticized for his comments on the war. In a letter he wrote to Middle Eastern Catholics on the first anniversary of the attack, he never mentioned Hamas by name or made explicit reference to its atrocities, including the hostages. The letter also quoted passages from the Gospel of John that have historically been used to fuel religious antisemitism.

In an interview last month about a soon-to-be-published book, Pope Francis called for an investigation into claims that Israel is carrying out a “genocide” in Gaza.

Last year, Pope Francis met with Palestinians whose relatives were security prisoners in Israeli jails or were in Gaza. Members of the Palestinian delegation told the media that the pope had described Israel’s actions as “genocide.” 

In September, Pope Francis responded to a question about IDF airstrikes in Lebanon that killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah; he replied that Israel’s airstrikes in Lebanon were going “beyond morality.”

In December, Pope Francis labeled children dying in wars, including in the Gaza Strip, as the “little Jesuses of today,” and said that IDF actions were reaping an “appalling harvest.”

The Vatican supports a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians that would establish an unprecedented militarized Palestinian state inside Israel’s borders that has been ethnically cleansed of Jews, with its capital in an exclusively Muslim Jerusalem.

Pope Francis has a history of being myopic regarding Palestinians and Arabs bent on destroying the Jewish state. In 2015, just a few days after the Vatican officially recognized the Palestinian state, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was granted an audience in the Apostolic Palace. After the meeting, Francis gave Abbas a special medallion, representing the angel of peace “destroying the bad spirit of war.” The Pope explained to Abbas that the gift was appropriate since “you are an angel of peace.”