6mo ago

Israel lashes out at Vatican after Pope Francis condemns killing of children

www.middleeasteye.net

Israeli officials fear the pope's vocal criticisms and symbolic gestures - such as this year’s nativity scene in St Peter’s Square featuring baby Jesus resting on a Palestinian keffiyeh - may influence global public opinion.
Created by Bethlehem artists Johny Andonia and Faten Nastas Mitwasi, the nativity scene prominently features Palestinian materials, including olive wood, a symbol of Palestinian resilience.
During its unveiling, Pope Francis condemned the global arms industry for profiting from human suffering and reiterated his call for an end to all wars, urging the faithful to remember those suffering in the holy land.
The display, praised by many as a message of solidarity and peace, drew backlash from Israel’s supporters, who accused the Vatican of promoting a pro-Palestinian agenda.

100 comments

This is NotTheOnion material. Like, are you actually mad that the fucking Pope is not on board with killing children?
- Ofcourse the catholic church is not onboard with murdering children. How will the clergy get laid if all the children are killed?
  But on a more serious note, the current pope is actually doing a decent job of calling out atrocities and promoting some of the decent aspects of their faith, and not propping up all of the bad stuff as god's will
  
  He’s also a transphobe who uses his platform to attack trans people.
  The current pope is good at PR, that’s all.
- Crossposted 👍
- But, security... Aren't tens of thousands of children's lives a small price to pay to stop the violence?
  /s
  
  Even in they old testament, only the first born children were killed.
- Crosspost was removed for being 'Not onion-y'. Oh well.
  
  Despite being highly upvoted and the comment section agreeing with the onion-y-ness as far as I saw. Ridiculous. Still a good post
Remember that part of Jesus's story where he had to flee because a mad king was systematically murdering children because he was scared that the child was "the king of kings".
What a wild parallel.
- If you believe in the divine Jesus, and have a decent understanding of history, surely you would know that the man would look more like the average Palestinian than the average Israeli.
  When it comes to religion though logic must leave the building.
"Child murderers complain that their child murdering is being called out"
- The pope is Hamas!
- "Is this antisemitism?"
  
  "no, this is Patrick"
“Yesterday, children were bombed. This is cruelty, not war,” the pontiff declared last Saturday, lamenting the immense humanitarian crisis in the besieged enclave.
Israel lashed out in response, accusing the pope of ignoring its security concerns.
Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein accused the pope of ignoring the broader context of Israel’s military actions, which have resulted in the killing of 17,000 children.
Maybe everyone should ignore a "security concern" if the only way to alleviate that concern is murdering 17,000 children?
Because whatever group you're concerned about, probably won't like you anymore after you murder 17,000 of their children....
Especially when the reason for your concern is people are mad you keep killing them in the first place.
- To be precise, not all 17k Palestinian children had the luxury of immediate death from being blown up with American bombs by Israeli terrorists. Many of them were in fact killed by sniper fire, with an alarmingly large percentage of the murdered children dying from headshot or chest shot sniper wounds. These are kids as young as 5 and 6 being headshot from miles away by Israeli snipers. This has been corroborated many times over by American doctors who were working in the Gaza hospitals, before all of those hospitals got blown up too.
  There is no possible security concern which could justify such acts of terrorism. Israel’s motivation is clearly a land grab, and Netanyahu’s is clearly to remain in power throughout the slaughter. They are absolute monsters.
- Have you considered that even when Israel doesn't kill children, people get upset about their children being corrupted in other ways instead?
  Edit: /s I guess?
  
  Well, that's a hypothetical.
  Because Israel has been systemically killing children since England invented it. And the people they first put in charge were killing natives before that.
  Hell, their first PM even admitted they were stealing the natives land:
  Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion#Zionist_leadership_between_1919_and_1948
  It honestly wasn't that long ago, and Israel has known from its inception that the people they stole the land from won't just forget.
  But today you have people with a straight face claiming the people whose land was stolen "invaded" land that was stolen from them literally a day earlier....
  Sure, some understand reality and just spreading propaganda, but you still run into some who legit belief the bullshit.
  
  so you saying people will be upset about one thing or another anyway, so who cares if Israel is murdering children? Thats a bold argument. Lets see how that works out for you.
If you’re on the pro-killing children side, it’s probably time to look in the mirror.
Israel's children killing business is cutting into the church child molesting business. It's a conflict of interest.
- Because they’re antisemites ofc
  
  Yeah. But then they are allowed to make fun of the Pope saying stuff like “Between the Pope and air conditioning, I’d choose air conditioning.” and you must laugh for some reason even though the dude is Jewish and so the Pope is nothing to him like any religious leader is nothing to me.
Imagine getting upset over "Don't kill children"
Israel thinks this is what's going to give them a poor public opinion!?
So, if not murdering children is pro-Palestinian, then I guess I'm pro-Palestinian.
And logically, that means being pro-Israeli (or at least pro-Israeli government, because I know there are lots of Israelis who are not happy about what their government is doing) is also pro-child-murder. Their logic, not mine!
- Unironically, this is how Israelis think. Those are the bad kids who would grow up to hurt them.
  
  And the logic of fascists is "we can wipe them all out, so then the threat will be gone", ignoring the practical impossibility of actually killing so many millions of people completely, as well as the fact that the entire world can see what they're doing, and have connections to the victims, so they are making way more enemies than they started with.
  It's a delusion of superiority, that they are so powerful and their foes so weak that they can overwhelm them.
  
  Absolutely if you go on killing their parents, their brithers and sisters; bomb their playgrounds, their schools. What else they are going to do except for lashing out anyone. These would be the kids vulnerable to be brainwashed into doing further horriffic things.
The vatican is finally right about something, even relevant, for once. Good for them. They have a lot to make up for, and this is a start.
They're gonna call the pope an antisemite
- Next up, are Zionists, antisemites?
- Well, to be fair were all already calling him a pedophile so...
This is probably a good time to mention that Israel, like all developed nations, has been experiencing a slowing birth rate.
This was a problem for them because the birthrate in the occupied territories was higher, and if you can’t maintain a Jewish majority in the country, how can you maintain the country as a Jewish homeland? This existential doom has hung over Israelis like climate change or the heat death of the universe: even if they aren’t destroyed in fire, they’ll simply dissolve over time until they disappear, and it will all be for nothing.
So you know. I’m not saying that killing Palestinian children was the solution they came up with. But the prospect of a justified way to wipe Gaza clean came their way, and it was too important an opportunity to pass up. If some children must be killed in the process, they think, silently, in the quietest corner of their hearts, then so be it.
- This isn't some secret. Listen to John Mearsheimer, who has talked about this for years. it is simple logic.
  There is about the same number of Arab Palestinians and Western Israelis in the area. So for the Jewish supremacy ethonstate that Israel wants to be there is only three options:
  Indefinite Apartheid. This is extremely costly and as the Arab population keeps growing more and more difficult to maintain. Also it is just preserving the status quo
  Ethnic cleansing. Drive all the Palestinians out. However then your neighbors have to harbor them, they form a resistance there, and they keep demanding their right to return.
  Genocide. By eradicating them all, you get the "final" solution to permanently steal and settle the land.
  So what we see is Israel maintaining option 1 and looking to escalate to option 2 and 3 whenever possible. Notice how they first tried to expel the population of Gaza into Egypt? When this option wasn't possible and they knew that their western supporters in the US, UK, Germany and others were okay with genocide, they escalated to genocide.
  The only way to get out of this situation with minimizing further destruction and murder is to abandon the Zionist project in favor of a just state that grants equal rights and justice to everyone living in Palestine.
  
  I don’t believe I presented the information as a secret. And I agree with everything else you said. I’m a one-state-solution guy. This does mean that the state won’t have one official ethnicity/culture/religion, but I have no regard for the desire to build a state hegemony.
- I have no proof of this, but I think Israeli intelligence knew the October Hamas attack was coming. Probably didn't realize how severe it was going to be, but they may have wanted it for an excuse for everything they did after.
  I can't even wrap my head around what the goal of Hamas was with their attack. Surely they knew that Israel's response would be total insanity. Maybe they're drinking their own koolaid even at the top.
  
  Pretty sure this is common knowledge by now:
  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67082047
  
  Lets not confuse intelligence that something major is going to happen with actionable intelligence where you can preemptively take action to prevent an attack.
  Prior to 9-11 there was most definitely increased chatter and I'd hazard a guess that many security and intelligence agencies knew something was going down on US soils but didn't have actionable specifics that would have allowed them to take appropriate action and prevent 9-11.
  I think it was a similar issue with Israel and they must have believed that the worse case was an isolated terrorist bombing and to prepare a typical lockdown and emergency services response and not a massive raid on their territories.
  
  Of course they knew, they have one of if not the best secret agency in the world.
- Unfortunately the data doesn't support your thesis. child birth graph Haredi jews are having more than double births than the average Israeli Muslim.
  Combined (secular etc.) Jewish birth rate is on par (slightly higher) than Israeli Muslims and Palestinians in Gaza. (This was even before all the bullshit started last year)
  
  Just a correction: what you call „Israeli Muslim“ are Palestinians. Very few Palestinians identify as Israeli. The Christians in the plot are also Palestinians.
  
  Well I got this information from some Israelis I guess you’d describe as “secular Jews” so their POV agrees with their data point in your graph anyway.
  Still not shown by this data though, is the birth rate in the territories. I’m not talking about Israeli Arabs and wasn’t before either. It would also help to have some sense of proportion. Haredi Jews are 13% so although their birthrate is high it doesn’t characterize Jews as a whole.
  But thanks for providing at least some data here.
- What, Israel counts as developed nation?
only an anti-semitist would say "don't kill children". they should get him fired for this.
There's nothing that says victims can't become aggressors. This is true for individuals as well as large groups of people, including nation-states. A child who was abused can become an abusive parent. A religious group that was persecuted for years can become an oppressor. Jews were victims of a genocide a few years ago, and were persecuted for years and years before in Europe, but Israel is not a victim anymore and the rest of the world should tell it to stop acting like one because they are the one commiting genocide.
Bethlehem was and is in Palestine.
Way to tell on yourself, Israel.
Those assholes have used that word so much its lost all meaning.
Pope antisemite? Incoming
- 100% … I’m actually shocked they haven’t already said it.
- Israeli government says the tradition of spitting on christians is not a criminal act at all. I imagine spitting on jews though, is terrorism.
  Ben Gvir had previously defended the act of spitting on Christians as “an ancient Jewish custom”.
  "Police have reportedly not been taking the attacks seriously, refusing to treat the incidents as part of a trend and downplaying the culprits' motives by saying they are carried out due to "mental illness"."
  from https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-spitting-christians-jerusalem-not-criminal-ben-gvir
  and
  "Being spat and shouted at by Israelis has become, for some Christians, “a daily occurrence”
  from https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/4/9/under-netanyahu-violence-against-christians-is-being-normalised
  
  Is there a word for a "what the fuck" feeling, quickly replaced by "I'm not surprised"?
Takes a special kind of genocidal asshole to be upset at a message calling for NOT killing kids.
Why do Israelis (well most of them) care what an old Catholic has to say?
- The logic chain of the Netanyahu camp is: Keep Netanyahu out of jail -by-> Keeping him in power -by-> Creating a problem and showing he is solving it -by-> Stirring up regional instability and dragging the US into it -by-> Being belligerent and genociding as hard as possible.
  Now for this to work, they need to maintain conflict while maintaining the support from the US. About 70% of the US identify as some form of Christian... and some significant percentage of them support Israel in their genocide because they believe it will bring the second coming of Jesus. But if the about 20% of Americans who identify as Catholic actually flip to being anti-genocide because their leader advocates for that, that is under threat - it potentially becomes close to a majority who are anti-genocide, and makes ongoing support from the US less likely.
  
  I'm with you up until you start talking specifically about catholics. I don't have stats on hand but I believe the venn diagram of "people who believe in forcing Jesus to come back with some bullshit in the holy land" and "catholics" has very little overlap.
  Here in the bible belt I've known and met many flavors of protestant who don't even think of catholics as christians.
"If you kill them you have fun only once!"
The Pope.
- Against all corrupt people with power. Making a single clean spot is not how to mop a floor.
"stop killing them before we get a chance to rape them!"
The pope is fine with Ukrainian children being murdered tho….
Fuck the pope and his piece of shit “religion”. Obligatory fuck Israel/IDF
- Was he fine with it?
  
  He never was okay with it. He has been calling for peace since it started. People just are using the fact that he's calling for peace talks over 2 years later as a sign he's okay with them having done what they've done, when he was calling for peace last year, the year before, months after it happened and condemned the actions of the government/ political figures who led to the war.
  Overall he has just been anti war. People would say that is avoiding nuisance or not casting responsibility on a specific group maybe, but unless you are looking for the Pope to call for holy wars, that's all you can really ask for. It's a religion. It will make money before and after the war, and no one should really care what he thinks in my opinion, because God has never stopped war in history, and never will. So why anyone assumes the someone who represents the word of God would stop war, is a strange concept.
  No one is saying "God is fine with genocide in ____". Because honestly, that would make just about as much sense to say the Pope is fine with it.
  
  I don't know. What's my preconceived notion and which answer would fit it best?
- Please don't do that whataboutism, it's so low grade propaganda crap.
  Both are obviously valid concerns (and yes both are genocides) but it adds nothing good trying to fight about who has it worse, they are both worse but in this thread we talk about the pope, palestine, Israel, not russia and Ukraune.
- How so? I think he said he wanted the war in Ukraine because of the opposite. It's basically the same anti-war stance as his views on this topic.

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