Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Israeli soldiers should respond with lethal force to attempts by Palestinian protesters to harm them, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said on Tuesday.
Liberman also compared international 'silence' on Hamas to Europe’s inaction before and during the Holocaust.
His comments were the harshest response thus far to a number of incidents in the West Bank last week that saw Israeli troops forced to retreat from Palestinian protesters. In Hebron on Thursday, troops were caught in a melee with Palestinian policeman and some 250 other protesters, with one soldier suffering injuries after being punched in the face by a Palestinian policeman.
“It is unacceptable that Palestinian policemen slap and punch soldiers and remain alive,” Liberman told Israel Radio.
Liberman ignored calls to withdraw to pre-1967 borders from the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, for peace treaty with the Palestinians accusing Europe of ignorance.
“Europe is ignoring calls to destroy Israel, just as they knew what was happening to the Jews in the 1940s and didn’t exactly do anything about it,” Liberman said.
The foreign minister, playing Samson with Europe, threatened Europe will be next in case anything wrong happens to Israel. “Whoever sacrifices the Jews and Israel today, must understand that they’re next,” he said.
Meretz chairwoman Zahava Gal-on called Liberman’s Holocaust comparison “despicable,” and said that Netanyahu and Liberman were leading Israel deeper and deeper into International isolation.
Hatnua MK Yoel Hasson also slammed Liberman’s comments, which he called “scandalous.”
“It’s a dangerous populist move intended to prop up the far right at the expense of Israel’s good and important ties with its friends,” he said in a statement.
