BREAKING: Cardinal Pizzaballa issues statement on Ben-Gvir video abusing flotilla activists. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, has issued a statement on videos showing Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir abusing detained, bound flotilla activists, describing the images as “disturbing, but not surprising.” What troubles him, he says, is not the incident itself. It's what made it possible. The Cardinal points to a "culture of contempt" entrenched in Israeli society — one that has gradually taken hold in how the other is perceived. It doesn't live only in shocking acts. It seeps into everyday language and reductive thinking, reducing the other to a stereotype. A vague enemy. "A form of human and spiritual impoverishment," he calls it — before it is ever a political one.