President Barack Obama distorted Palestinian Authority terror at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Wednesday night and asserted that 2012 was a good year in Judea and Samaria because no one died from terrorist attacks.
He also implicitly stated Israel could settle for less than total security so long as the possibility of rocket attacks from Judea and Samaria were “diminished.”
President Obama tried to minimize his comments on the “peace process” during the “Barack and Bibi” show, which showed that they are the best of chums who never disagree.
The president called Netanyahu “Bibi” several times, and both of them poured lavish praise on each other while being remarkably honest on Iran. Prime Minister Netanyahu admitted for the first time that President Obama is correct in saying that Iran is at least a year from manufacturing a nuclear weapon. He differentiated between Iran’s ability to make a weapon and its capability to produce enough enrich uranium for one.
It was the “peace process” that prompted comments from the president that were enough to show that his advisers still think terrorist attacks, at least in Israel, are only dangerous when people are killed. That was the same kind of thinking that kept Israel from striking at Hamas terrorists in Gaza so long as rockets landed in “open areas” and wounded “only” a few farmers and foreign workers. After missiles started wounding and murdering civilians closer to Tel Aviv last November, Israel finally “had a right to defend itself.”
President Obama made two statements that ignore reality and which will give him the excuse to lecture Israelis at his speech at the Jerusalem Conference Center Thursday night that Israel faces disaster if it does not admit that the country cannot exist so long as Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria remain an “obstacle” to a Palestinian Authority state.
First of all, the president said that there was not a single death in Judea and Samaria in 2012 due to Palestinian terror.
Secondly, he stated that a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority cannot be concluded until Israelis feel that the possibility of rocket attacks has “diminished.” He did not say that there should be “no chance” of missile attacks but only that the “possibility of rockets has diminished.”
A “diminishing” possibility is what the United States and well-meaning starry-eyed Israeli dreamers, like President Shimon Peres, supposedly created in 2005 with the expulsion of Jews and the withdrawal of all Israeli soldiers from Gaza.
Knesset Members scoffed at right-warnings that rockets would land on Ashkelon, let alone Tel Aviv. President Peres found himself stating later that he simply cannot understand why Hamas would attack Israel with rockets after the withdrawal from Gaza.
Obama’s mention that no one died in attacks from Judea and Samaria last year is even more off the mark.
First of all, there were many serious injuries.
Secondly, an infant’s life is hanging in the air at this very moment after last week’s savage rock-throwing terrorist attack on a central Samaria highway. The rock-throwers achieved their aim of causing a crash, similar to the fatal accident in Kiryat Arba in September 2011 that killed Asher Palmer and is two-year-old son. But that happened less than four months before 2012, so Obama could forget about it in his wrap-up for the year. And last week’s attack is in 2013, so that also does not count.
Thirdly, the reason there were no deaths is not because Palestinian Authority terrorists did not try but because the IDF has been able to deploy from within Judea and Samaria to prevent them, an impossibility if Mahmoud Abbas takes full control of Judea and Samaria and excludes the IDF.
Here is only a partial list from the IDF on terrorist activity in 2012 and not including daily rock-throwing and firebombing attacks.
— IDF forces stopped a would-be bomber over Passover at a checkpoint east of Shechem (Nablus) in northern Samaria. The terrorist was carrying improvised explosive devices, three knives and 50 bullets.
— Two Palestinian teens carrying bombs and guns were nabbed by Israeli forces in northern Samaria.
— IDF forces uncovered four improvised bombs on two Palestinians at a crossing north of Jericho.