By Erez Lin, Israel Hayom—
U.S. President Obama is drawing moral equivalence between habitual Palestinian incitement to terrorism and “extremely infrequent” Israeli attacks, thus downplaying the severity of Palestinian actions, veteran Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said Friday.
Krauthammer’s statement came in response to Obama’s remarks Friday that “it is important for both Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli elected officials, and President Abbas and other people in positions of power, to try to tamp down rhetoric that may feed violence or anger or misunderstanding.”
In an interview with Fox later that day, Krauthammer called Obama’s statement “shameful” and “a disgrace.”
“I think the president’s statement is shameful and it follows shameful statements by his secretary of state. This is moral equivalence — the idea that somehow the Israeli leadership, that Netanyahu is using inflammatory rhetoric,” he said.
“We all know how and why this started: This was Hamas, this was also the Palestinian Authority, they spread the rumor, they spread the libel, they spread the lie, that as we heard the Israelis are trying to divide Al-Aqsa mosque, they’re trying to desecrate it, they’re trying to destroy it, they’re trying to change the status quo — that is not true whatsoever. It’s been amplified, it has not been tamped out at all by the Palestinian Authority, which it should be, and they have encouraged the violence,” he said.
“You’ve seen some of the videos where people are shot while literally holding the knife with the blood visible on the knife. The idea that there is some equivalence here I think is disgraceful,” he added. “Why can’t the president simply say, ‘These are acts of terror and we condemn them. They are based on a lie. We call on the Palestinian leadership to say that it is a lie and stop the violence’?”
Krauthammer went on to describe Obama’s behavior as “the most unfriendly, unsympathetic to Israel of any president since the founding of the state since 1948. He takes every opportunity to demonstrate that.”
