Recently a senior Vatican official compared Gaza to a concentration camp? Two questions: (1) What are the conditions of Palestinians in the Gaza strip? (2) How appropriate is this kind of language?

JERUSALEM — Israel said Saturday it was shocked and distressed by a
senior Vatican cardinal’s likening of Gaza under Israel’s military
offensive to a concentration camp.

A spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the cardinal, whose
remarks appeared in an interview Wednesday, adopted the kind of
language that Hamas and other Islamic militant groups have used to
demonize Israel and equate it with Nazi Germany.

“It was shocking to hear the same kind of terminology from such a
high-ranking member of the church,” Israeli spokesman Yigal Palmor said
Saturday.

Cardinal Renato Martino, a former Vatican envoy to the United
Nations and now Pope Benedict XVI’s top official on issues of peace and
justice, said in the interview that Gaza now resembles a “big
concentration camp.”