Roberto Benigni, from 'Life is Beautiful', on Israel: "If they don't feel pain, they're not human."

Italian actor and director Roberto Benigni has expressed his outrage at the Israeli offensive in Gaza and the deaths of thousands of children. The European cinema icon spoke vehemently during the television program Propaganda Live on the Italian channel La 7, where he denounced international passivity and called for humanity in the face of suffering.

In one of his appearances on the program last July, the Oscar winner for Best Actor for Life is Beautiful (1997) spoke harshly about the situation in Palestine . "Don't you feel the cry of pain that rises from everywhere, not from Italy, but from the world? We are all of the same body. If you don't feel pain, you are not men, you are not human beings," he said, alluding to the suffering of the most vulnerable.

Her message, widely shared on social media, has sparked a profound debate about the responsibility of world leaders and Europe's role in the face of the genocide in Gaza. Benigni, whose most famous work chronicled the tenderness between a father and son in the midst of Nazi barbarism , denounced the apparent normalization of child deaths in the Gaza Strip.

"Why do they keep killing children? They're not men. What madness is this? It must stop. It's cowardice. It's unbearable for the human soul," he declared, visibly moved. According to Reuters figures from July 29, more than 60,000 people have died since the start of the Israeli offensive, with almost a third of the dead being under 18. For the filmmaker, it's incomprehensible that these figures haven't produced an immediate collective reaction.

During his speech, the Italian director also questioned the solidity of the European project. "There is no true European Union . If countries were truly united, perhaps these wars could have been prevented ," he noted. With a committed and deeply humane discourse, Benigni argued that pain knows no borders or ideologies, and that remaining silent in the face of injustice is also a form of cowardice.