AP reporter to State spox: ‘You’re being silent while people are dying left and right’
The Washington Free Beacon
11/19/2012
Associated Press reporter Matt Lee pressed State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland at Monday’s briefing to comment on Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s assertion that “Israel is a terrorist state” and is carrying out a “massacre of children” in Gaza.
Adhering to longstanding administration policy of never criticizing the Islamist regime in Turkey, she refused.
“You’re not telling us anything,” Lee said. “When the leaders of Turkey come out and say that Israel is engaged in acts of terrorism and you refuse to say that you don’t agree with that — or maybe you do agree with it — that’s being silent.”
“We have made a decision that we need to engage in our diplomatic work diplomatically,” Nuland replied.
“We, of course, agree that rhetorical attacks against Israel are not helpful at this moment,” Nuland went on to say.
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Related: The Blaze has more:
…Nuland tried to stave off Lee’s tough questions by noting that the White House has repeatedly affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself.
“And yet you won’t stick up for your ally, Israel, when the Turks, another one of your allies, say that they’re engaged in terrorism in Gaza?” Lee asked.
“We have been extremely clear about our concern for Israel’s security, about the fact that Israel has a right to self-defense, but I am not going to go further than that today, Matt,” Nuland responded.
“Why can’t you say that you don’t agree with the Turks?”…
Update: Obama Official Participates in OIC Meetings on Banning “Defamation of Islam”
…This is the latest attempt by the Obama administration to appease Islam and restrict the Constitutional rights of Americans.
Islamic terrorists have carried out over 19,000 deadly attacks in the name of Islam since 9-11 attacks in New York and Washington DC…
Please read the whole thing!
Also, GAFFNEY: Middle East melting down into ‘Obamawar’ Israel-Gaza strip conflict deserves president’s moniker
While debating Mitt Romney this fall, President Obama declared that he had decided to embrace the term “Obamacare” — a name originally coined and used by its detractors to tie the president firmly to the health care fiasco he had spawned. Perhaps he will, therefore, not object if we dub the escalating conflict in the Middle East by a similarly apt name: “Obamawar.”
After all, frantic efforts under way at the moment by assorted diplomats aimed at containing hostilities between Israel and the terrorist enclave known as the Gaza Strip (primarily by blocking Israel’s decisive retaliation) cannot obscure a dismal reality: The crescendo of rockets and missiles unleashed by the Palestinians on Israeli civilians are a predictable repercussion of President Obama’s reckless defense and foreign policies.
Consider how such attacks — and the danger to Israel and to us that is growing by the day — have been aided and abetted by an Obama doctrine that can be described in nine words: Embolden our enemies, undermine our friends, diminish our country….
Update 2: Obama Says Arab Spring’s Islamization Of Middle East Has Not Made Israel’s Situation Tougher…
Update 3: Obama presses for Israeli restraint as he seeks ceasefire deal with Hamas
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Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.
Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906 – 1945
