War of words between Israel and the Vatican over Gaza heats up

ROME – Just as Israel continues to deploy its military “hard power” on the Gaza strip, defying international pressure to back down, so too it shows no signs of halting its “soft power” campaign either. On the contrary, Israel is pursuing a relentless war of words against any party it believes guilty of false moral equivalence between terrorism and self-defense, or of trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes.

One such “soft power” front is with the Vatican, as Israeli officials, in tandem with...