The government of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were emphatic Monday in rejecting a claim by Pope Francis that Israeli forces were responsible for the deaths of two civilians in a church in Gaza.
Reports emerged over the weekend that a mother and daughter had been killed in Gaza in “cold blood” by the IDF while sheltering in the only Catholic church in Gaza City. Pope Francis condemned the killing as “terrorism.” The alleged shooting was also condemned by Catholic officials elsewhere.
But in a press briefing Monday, Israeli government spokesperson Tal Heinrich said that an investigation had been conducted, and nothing was found to substantiate claims made in the media and repeated by the Pope.
“There was no fighting in the Rimal neighborhood [of Gaza] where this specific Catholic Church is located,” she said. “The IDF has conducted no fighting around that area. The IDF talked to representatives of the Christian community — it was not something that was brought up in the conversation.
“We looked into it — even when the truth is the most inconvenient thing to acknowledge, we admit it, as was the case with the three hostages who were mistakenly shot.”
The Times of Israel reported:
The Israel Defense Forces refuted on Sunday a claim that it had targeted a Catholic parish in the Gaza Strip, after the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem asserted that an elderly Christian woman and her daughter had been shot and killed by an Israeli sniper on the grounds of the Holy Family Parish on Saturday.
Stressing that the IDF “does not target civilians, no matter their religion,” the army told AFP that it had on Saturday been contacted by church representatives about an incident in the Holy Family Parish, but “no reports of a hit on the church, nor civilians being injured or killed, were raised.”
“A review of the IDF’s operational findings support this,” it added. “The IDF takes claims regarding harm to sensitive sites with the utmost seriousness — especially churches — considering that Christian communities are a minority group in the Middle East.”
Heinrich also observed: “There are numerous cases [where Israel was] accused of things that were reported, and as you know, media reports had to backtrack their statements.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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