Candidly speaking: Obama’s ongoing shameful behavior against Israel We are now reconciled to the fact that in any conflict – even when we are exercising our right of self-defense – we will either be condemned or, at best, accused of acting disproportionately. However, the latest round of hypocrisy by Western leaders, including US President Barack Obama, beats all records. Despite anger and condemnation from many of his constituents, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has, until last week, effectively been acting as a supplicant by virtually pleading for a cease-fire, assuring Hamas that Israel would abide by a new truce. Responding to their missiles with “restraint” and reacting on a tit-for-tat basis, bombing empty sites, Israel dispensed with any pretense of implementing genuine deterrence. As critics predicted, Hamas interpreted this as a signal of Israeli weakness, which emboldened the organization to intensify and extend missile attacks to all major cities, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, sending the majority of the population to the shelters. Hundreds of missiles rained down throughout the country, but Iron Dome has successfully intercepted most of the rockets, thus avoiding massive civilian casualties and major dislocation on the home front. Iron Dome has proven to be another example of Israeli ingenuity in the face of crisis, but no system is foolproof, and we must gird ourselves for possible casualties in the future. The efforts undertaken by the Israel Defense Forces to minimize civilian casualties are unparalleled in the annals of warfare. Telephone calls are made in advance of targeting buildings to minimize civilian casualties, despite the fact that this also allows Hamas to vacate the premises. It should be noted that the US has never felt obliged to provide advance notice to the families of terrorists to vacate buildings when its drones were employed to carry out targeted assassinations. Nevertheless, in a conflict of this nature, irrespective of all precautions, loss of innocent civilian lives is inevitable – especially in a terrain in which rocket launchers and command centers are deliberately located in heavily populated civilian enclaves, including hospitals and kindergartens. Furthermore, Hamas cynically employs civilians, including women and children, as human shields, and it is Hamas who must be held accountable for the inevitably increasing number of civilian casualties. We are grateful to the American people and the successive administrations, including the current administration, for the generous aid toward our defense requirements. Although we appreciate that the US administration expressed support for our right to exercise self-defense, we consider it intolerable and hypocritical for Obama and his spokesmen to blur the distinction between the terrorist aggressors and us, their purported allies who are acting in self-defense.jpost/Opinion/Columnists/Candidly-speaking-Obamas-ongoing-shameful-behavior-against-Israel-362630
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 03:56:50 +0000
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