In the peak of summer, as Operation Gideon’s Chariots (launched in May 2025) entered its second month, news emerged that the Israeli army had bombed Gaza’s only Catholic church, the Church of the Holy Family, on July 17. The strike killed three people—a relatively small number in a territory where daily fatalities range between 40 and 70—but it drew attention across, where many governments had assumed that Christian sites and communities would be spared the violence by religious or diplomatic convention.