By Stan Goodenough
Mar 02, 2008
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Sunday slapped down international condemnation of his country's self-defense action against Gaza's terrorists, saying no-one has the right to tell Israel how to fight a moral war.
Olmert was speaking at the weekly meeting of his cabinet in Jerusalem, after the United Nations Security Council and the European Union leveled harsh criticism at the Jewish state.
He also slammed the blatant bias revealed by the criticism: "I don't remember those who are criticizing saying how unbearable the situation is in southern Israel when Israeli citizens are hurt" by terrorists who have for months rained rockets on Jewish civilians, he said.
"It needs to be kept in mind that the State of Israel is defending its civilians in the south. No one has the right to preach morals to Israel, which must take the fundamental action of defending its residents against the rocket fire."
The UN Security Council has condemned the violence, as has the European Union.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon messaged the Arab side saying the rocket attacks "serve no purpose, endanger civilians and bring misery to the Palestinian people."
But while recognizing Israel's "right to self defense," he nonetheless condemned the IDF’s pinpoint operations against the terrorists as "excessive and disproportionate." [One wonders what vocabulary he would employ if Israel carpet-bombed Gaza – as other countries would certainly have done long ago–Ed.]
"Israel must fully comply with international law and exercise restraint," he added.
Meanwhile, Olmert has vowed to "step up attacks on militants, in defiance of warnings from the UN" as Sky News reported it. Sky's news staff betrayed their own bias, with reporter Dominic Waghorn describing Israel as extremely defiant while the news anchor described the terrorism as "what Israel calls militant rocket strikes into its territory." [What, one wonders, does Sky News call it? A Sunday-afternoon picnic?-Ed.]