(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 20 - Italy's rabbis have called Pope Francis' call for a probe into a possible 'genocide' by Israel in Gaza potentially "very dangerous".
    The pope's words in a new book are "apparently prudent", but in reality "they risk being very dangerous", the Italian Rabbinical Assembly (ARI) said in a note Wednesday.
    "Words are important and we must be very careful about how we use them, especially if we play a religious leadership role", underlines the Italian rabbis, quoted by the portal Moked/Pagine Ebraiche.
    They recalled how Jews, throughout their history, have been accused "of various things including deicide and ritual murder" and "transformed into symbols of evil, into bloodthirsty characters", with devastating consequences.
    Referring to the various war fronts open in the Middle East, ARI said: "We would all like this to end as soon as possible, for the hostilities to end, for there to be no more possibility of a new massacre like that of October 7 (by Hamas), for the deaths of innocents to end and for the hostages to finally be freed".
    In this sense, "the call for peace unites us".
    But the worst way to pursue peace, ARI argues, "is to consider the blame unilaterally and transform the attacked into aggressors or even bloodthirsty avengers".
    Francis says in a new book excerpted in an Italian newspaper Sunday that the international community should investigate whether Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Gaza.
    "According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide," Francis says in the book "Hope Never Disappoints. Pilgrims towards a Better World", to be released for the Jubilee 2025 and of which the newspaper La Stampa carried excerpts Sunday.
    "It should be investigated carefully to determine whether it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international organizations".
    The volume, edited by Hernán Reyes Alcaide (Edizioni Piemme), was released on Tuesday in Italy, Spain and Latin America, and will then be published in various other countries.
    The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says 43,985 people, many of them women and children, have been killed in the Strip in an Israeli assault since the October 7, 2023 attacks by the Islamist militants in southern Israel which killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
    (ANSA).