OPINION - These awful killings in a Gaza church show how Israel is losing the strategic war

Measured, is how you might describe the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pizzaballa, whom I’ve met twice now. He’s a clever, thoughtful Italian – a potential future pope – and the last person you’d expect to indulge in excitable hyperbole.

So when he said on Saturday that “a sniper of the IDF murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family Parish in”, I believe him. “No warning was given, no notification was provided,” his statement said. “They were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the Parish, where there are no belligerents.”