Did or did not U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry link the failure of Israeli-Palestinian peace, meaning the creation of a Palestinian Authority country on its own terms, with the ability of the ISIS to recruit terrorist groupies?
Here is U.S. State Dept. Marie Harf’s denial to journalists who asked about Kerry’s comments that angered so many Israelis:
“He did not make any linkage between Israel and the growth of ISIL, period. And we can go back over what he actually said, which I have in front of me. He did not make that linkage.”
Okay, Ms. Harf, let’s indeed so back over your boss’s words.
Here is what Kerry said in his remarks at a reception for Muslims marking the Eid al-Adha holiday and reported here on Friday.
“I think that it is more critical than ever that we be fighting for peace, and I think it is more necessary than ever.
“As I went around and met with people in the course of our discussions about the ISIL coalition, the truth is we – there wasn’t a leader I met with in the region who didn’t raise with me spontaneously the need to try to get peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause of recruitment and of street anger and agitation that they felt – and I see a lot of heads nodding – they had to respond to.
“And people need to understand the connection of that. And it has something to do with humiliation and denial and absence of dignity, and Eid celebrates the opposite of all of that.”
Note that in the middle of his remarks, he commented, “And I see a lot of heads nodding.”
It was clear that the nodding heads understood exactly what you, I, and others understood: “The need to try to get peace between Israel and the Palestinians… was a cause of recruitment and of street anger and agitation that they felt … they had to respond to.”
Harf insisted that what he said is not what he said, to wit:
“What he was saying is in the course of his work, do leaders in Europe and in the Middle East tell him that they like that the U.S. wants to try to achieve peace? Of course they do. Do the leaders think peace would help create a more stable region? Of course they do….He did not make a linkage between Israel and the growth of ISIL, period.”
Wait a minute, ma’am. Kerry, and everyone else in the blind diplomatic world, “think peace would create a more stable region.” Kerry specifically stated that every leader he spoke with “in the course of our discussion about the ISIL coalition” said that the need for peace “was a cause of recruitment and of street anger and agitation.”
So how can she say that he did not say what he did day?
Said Arikat, the Al Quds newspaper’s propagandist who dished out a daily doses of hype for the Palestinian Authority, asked Harf, “So you think that those leaders that told the Secretary of State there is a linkage, in fact, they’re expressing a sentiment of hate toward –“
Harf interrupted and insisted, “That’s not what he was saying. He was saying that as he travels around the world building a global coalition to defeat ISIL, which is an avowed enemy of Israel – the Secretary, helping to put together this coalition to defeat an enemy that has said they’re an avowed enemy of Israel, that he hears from people in conversations, as we have for many years, that if we could resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that would help create a more stable region.”