Rubio: Obama and Hillary Won’t Condemn Palestinian Terrorism, and It’s Endangering Israeli Lives

Marco Rubio is standing up for Israel after a series of Palestinian terror attacks targeting Jews in Israel.

Rubio writes in a blog post on Medium, “This terrorism follows weeks of growing violence against Israel, from firebomb attacks on Israeli security forces at the Temple Mount to Palestinian rock throwers, who stoned a Jewish driver in Jerusalem, forcing him off the road and killing him. Reminiscent of the days when Yasser Arafat talked peace in English and jihad in Arabic, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — a man President Obama regularly hails as a peacemaker — is inciting the bloodshed.”

The Republican presidential candidate continues:

And what has been the Obama administration’s response to weeks of official Palestinian incitement, anti-Semitism, and violence? President Obama refuses to criticize Abbas or demand that he stop the incitement and violence. Instead, the administration plays the moral equivalence game. “All sides,” it says, must “restore calm,” as if Israel is somehow to blame for being the victim of terrorism. Secretary of State Kerry this week cautioned “everybody to be calm, not to escalate the situation.” For her part, Hillary Clinton has been silent. This is not surprising given that as Secretary of State she led many of the Obama administration’s attacks on Israel.

Indeed, the indifference that President Obama and Hillary Clinton display toward incitement and violence against Jews fits a long-running pattern of callousness and neglect toward the Jewish state. In June 2009, President Obama reportedly told American Jewish leaders that he wanted to put daylight between America and Israel. He went on to demand a full settlement freeze to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations — an extraordinary precondition that even Abbas himself never made.

The president’s demand destroyed any hope of moving forward on peace, asking too much of Israel and giving Abbas no incentive to negotiate. The Palestinians refused to enter negotiations until the last month of the freeze, but Hillary Clinton reserved her anger for a 45-minute rant aimed at Prime Minister Netanyahu. Over the next five years, this pattern persisted — administration officials largely absolved the Palestinians of responsibility for incitement and terror while threatening to reassess relations with Israel and calling the leader of a close ally a “chicken — .”

By distancing the United States from Israel, President Obama has created an atmosphere that rewards the provocative behavior of the Palestinian Authority. Absolving the guilty, blaming the innocent, and ignoring Palestinian incitement is putting lives at risk. It is long past time for President Obama and Hillary Clinton to call on President Abbas — clearly and publicly — to work to stop the anti-Semitism and terror. And it is also long past time for President Obama and Hillary Clinton to pledge — clearly and publicly — to block the Palestinian campaign to bypass peace with Israel by unilaterally declaring statehood.

Source: The Weekly Standard