Jerusalem Cardinal Offers Himself To Hamas In Exchange For Israeli Child Hostages

 Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Pope Francis’ top representative in the Middle East, offered himself to Hamas in exchange for Israeli children taken hostage by the terrorist group.

Hamas killed more than 1,300 people after invading Israel last Saturday, slaughtering Israeli families and hundreds of young people attending a music festival. The group has reportedly taken hundreds of Israeli hostages, including children.

“I am ready for an exchange, anything, if this can lead to freedom, to bring the children home,” the Catholic said Monday during a video conference with journalists in Italy, according to the New York Post. “No problem. There is total willingness on my part.”

“The first thing to do is to try to win the release of the hostages, otherwise there will be no way of stopping [an escalation],” Pizzaballa continued. “We are willing to help, even me personally.”

Pizzaballa, who serves as the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, has been vocal about Hamas’ destruction and his concerns for innocents, including the small minority of Christians in the Gaza Strip, which he estimated at nearly 1,000.

“What we saw last week in South Israel was dramatic, horrific and barbaric,” Pizzaballa said Saturday, Daily Wire correspondent Bree Dail reported. “Now what we’re seeing occurring in Gaza is extremely problematic — I’m very concerned about our (Christian) community. This war will have a big impact on the faithful there, and with the disorder of the situation, we don’t know where many are.”

“We have a little less than a thousand Christians in Gaza, but we don’t have any place (for them) to go,” Pizzaballa said. “We have no place for them to evacuate to on that side of the border, and for the many disabled, the elderly, we have no way to transport them even if we did have a place. So we are powerless in this moment.”

Pizzaballa also made clear that now is not the time to ask Israel to make a peace deal.

“Right now, to talk about ‘dialogue’ in this moment is something not realistic, not concrete or practical,” he said. “We have to stop the violence, the war, and then see what we can do, after the ruins of this war are in front of us.”

“This crisis is showing us that religion has a very strong determining influence in all of what we are witnessing and what is happening,” the cardinal added. “It is very important that inter-religious dialogue find new paths — it’s not easy, of course — there are a lot of different approaches, and amongst Jews and Muslims, they don’t have one authority that oversees each religion, recognized by all. This is, however, our future challenge. Our society is becoming more fractured — multicultural, multi-religious — and we need to learn how to better live together. This cannot be done if we don’t talk with one another.”