ROME – A prominent Italian Holocaust survivor has publicly criticized Pope Francis for suggesting he investigate Israel on charges of “genocide” over its response to the Gaza conflict.
“Genocide is something else. You can talk about genocide when a million children are burned to death,” 93-year-old Edith Brooke told the magazine. interview monday italian daily newspaper La Repubblica.
Pope Francis has already described Israel's military invasion of Gaza as a “genocide” of women and children, but he recently upped the ante by calling for an investigation into whether Israel's attack on Gaza constitutes genocide.
“According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of genocide,” the Pope said in a book-length interview with Hernan Reyes Alcaide. Hope Never Disappoints: A Pilgrim for a Better Worldexcerpts of which were published on Sunday.
“We need to carefully examine whether it falls within the technical definitions set by lawyers and international organizations,” he said.
“I regret that the Pope referred to genocide. It is an inappropriate word, used too easily, and in fact represents the only true genocide in history, the Shoah that we experienced. It's disrespectful.” said Brooke once hosted Pope Francis at her apartment in Rome.
Pope Francis' words also prompted an immediate reaction from the Holy See's Israeli embassy, which rejected any comparisons between Israel's military operations and genocide.
in a statement published Regarding X, the embassy said: “The October 7 massacre was a genocide against the Israeli people. Israel is acting in self-defense in accordance with international law. Any attempt to call this self-defense by another name is an attempt to name the Jewish state. Become.”
Mr Brooke, a Hungarian-born Jew and survivor of Auschwitz, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen, said the bloodshed in Gaza was “a tragedy that concerns us all”, but said Israel would seek to eliminate all Palestinians. He argued that he was not doing so.
That's rather what Hamas “wants to do,” she said, noting that Hamas has said it wants to “wipe out the Jews of the entire world.”
Perhaps the Pope used the word genocide because he did not feel the weight of what he was saying. That's why he says it so easily,” Brook said.
“He can't control what he says. He's not Italian, so I think that's probably why the text leaked,” she added. “It's happened before.”
“I have a very close relationship with the Pope, but I don't want to be angry with him. He came to visit me at my house,” Brooke declared. “But that's not enough.”
“He came to my house to ask for forgiveness for everything that happened to Jews. But that's not enough. He should do a little more with his anti-Semitism,” she added.
The risk of using the word “genocide'' too easily is that “using it in inappropriate situations diminishes the seriousness of the actual genocide.'' Genocide is something else. ”
“The Armenian genocide was a genocide. The one million children who were burned in the ovens of Auschwitz were a genocide, along with the other five million Jews who were also burned in concentration camps,” she said. said.
But Gaza, she said, is “not a genocide.”
