ROME — Israel’s Embassy to the Holy See has lambasted Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin for his “deplorable” criticism of Israeli policy in Gaza.
On February 13, at an event commemorating the 95th anniversary of the 1929 Lateran Pacts, which regularized the relationship between the Holy See and the Republic of Italy, Cardinal Parolin described Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza as “carnage” and insisted that the military response has been disproportionate.
“Israel’s right of self-defense, which has been invoked to justify this operation, must be proportional, and with 30,000 dead it certainly isn’t,” Parolin said, citing statistics furnished by the Gaza Health Ministry.
In a February 14 post on X, the Israeli embassy called Parolin’s remarks “a deplorable declaration.”
“To judge the legitimacy of a war without taking into account ALL of the circumstances and relevant data inevitably leads to mistaken conclusions,” it said.
Hamas has transformed Gaza “into the largest terroristic base ever seen,” the embassy said. “There is almost no civil infrastructure that has not been used by Hamas for their criminal plans.”
Gaza civilians “actively participated in the October 7 unprovoked invasion into Israeli territory, killing, raping and taking civilians hostage,” the text stated, adding that all these acts “are defined as war crimes.”
Any objective observer “cannot help but come to the conclusion that the responsibility for the death and destruction in Gaza lies with Hamas and Hamas alone,” the embassy stated. “This is forgotten too often and too easily.”
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Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart News“It is not enough to condemn the genocidal massacre of October 7 and then point the finger at Israel by referring to its right to existence and self-defense only as a simple duty and not considering the bigger picture,” it concluded.
On Thursday, the same embassy issued a follow-up statement toning down its criticism of the Vatican’s position.
The ambassy said that the word “deplorable” derived from an Italian translation of the original English-language statement defining Cardinal Parolin’s words as “regrettable.”
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