In his speech to the United Nations yesterday, President Obama said that “more progress is needed” in working towards “a just and lasting peace between Israel, Palestine, and the Arab world.” As part of his message, Obama said “we continue to call on Palestinians to end incitement against Israel.” On Fox News today, former UN ambassador John Bolton mocked Obama’s “incitement” line, saying “it’s not incitement the Israelis are worried about, it’s rocket attacks.” Watch it:
Bolton’s claim, which he used to support his belief that Obama’s speech was “as negative, or more, as anything any American president has said,” is disingenuous at best. He neglected to mention that moments later in his speech, Obama explicitly condemned Palestinian rocket attacks:
We must remember that the greatest price of this conflict is not paid by us. It is paid by the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life in the night. It is paid by the Palestinian boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own. These are God’s children. And after all of the politics and all of the posturing, this is about the right of every human being to live with dignity and security.
As Matt Duss notes, Bolton also attacked Obama for employing the same language on the Israeli-Palestinian solution that his old boss — President Bush — used.
No comments:
Post a Comment