The pope is right about Israel and Gaza. This is cruelty, not war

Pope Francis is a paradoxical figure.

Despite leading a church with a long, egregious history of being synonymous with strife, injustice and abuse, the old, ailing Argentinian Jesuit strikes me, at his core, as a modest clergyman who abhors human suffering and misery.

Like you and me, the pope can see what Israel has done with such ruthless ferocity to besieged Palestinians for more than a year in the barren, dystopian remnants of Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

I believe that Francis understands that bearing witness to human suffering and misery on an almost incomprehensible scale requires a response, that silence under the awful, prevailing circumstances means, at the least, blithe acceptance and, at the worst, conscious complicity.

So, to his credit, the pontiff has said what needed to be said.

The pope has, in effect, abandoned neutrality in favour of a raw, refreshing honesty to declare – with candid language – his sympathy for and solidarity with the millions of Palestinian victims of Israel’s relentless killing lust.

I am convinced that Francis will be remembered for having taken an honourable stand at the right time for the right reasons while so many other “leaders” in Europe and beyond have armed an apartheid regime with the weapons and diplomatic cover to engineer a still unfolding 21st century genocide.

Francis will be remembered, as well, for rebuffing efforts to intimidate or bully him to qualify or retract statements made from “the heart” that Israel is guilty of “cruelty” as it goes methodically about reducing much of Gaza and the West Bank to dust and memory.

Instead, bolstered by the truth and an apt sense of righteousness, the pontiff has refused to step back or “soften” his remarks.