Israel-bashing just came back to haunt the State Department: NYPost Editorial
http://nypost.com/2015/10/06/israel-bashing-just-came-back-to-haunt-the-state-deptartment/
Memo to the State Department: It’s time to think twice about knee-jerk criticism of Israel. You never know when it might turn around and bite you.
Just that happened when Associated Press reporter Matt Lee caught deputy State spokesman Mark Toner by surprise at a briefing this week. Lee asked about Saturday’s US bombing of a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that left 22 patients and staff dead.
The administration has called the attack a tragic mistake. But Lee recalled Israel’s August 2014 shelling of a UN school in Gaza — which State immediately labeled “disgraceful,” adding: “The suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians.”
Lee asked: Does that policy still hold?
Toner was at a complete loss. He haltingly apologized for the loss of life, stressed that the United States avoids civilian casualties, said any further comment would be “too much speculation” and begged Lee to “give me a pass [while] we wait for the investigation to run its course.”
That’s a pretty reasonable position, actually. But it flies in the face of last year’s instantaneous criticism of Israel — made long before any investigation had even begun.
Enemies like the Taliban, Hamas and Hezbollah quite intentionally hide among civilians, using them as human shields.
Innocents die in all wars — but the fog of war is rarely more dense than when the other side is deliberately trying to make you kill civilians.
Israel’s known that for a long time — and now the Obama administration is painfully coming to learn it, too.
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