Netanyahu slams Pope Francis after calling for international probe into Israel’s genocide in Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has criticised Pope Francis after he called to investigate the Israeli army’s commission of genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Speaking before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, Netanyahu described Pope Francis’ comments as “disgraceful”.

Last week, Pope Francis suggested the global community should study whether Israel’s military campaign in Gaza constituted genocide of the Palestinian people, in some of his most explicit criticism yet of Israel’s conduct in its year-long war.

In a new book, “Hope Never Disappoints. Pilgrims Towards a Better World”, the Catholic leader said “according to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of genocide,” he wrote, in extracts published on Sunday in Italy’s La Stampa daily.

The book is scheduled to be published next Tuesday, ahead of the Pope’s Jubilee in 2025.

Earlier in September, the Pontiff said “Israel’s attacks in Gaza and Lebanon are immoral and disproportionate,” adding that the Israeli army had exceeded the rules of war.

The Israeli occupation army aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip has left about 148,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and elderly, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.

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