US Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in Istanbul, compared the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing to the nine Turkish activists killed by the IDF as they tried to break Gaza’s naval blockade. Here’s what Kerry said:
I know it’s an emotional issue with some people. I particularly say to the families of people who were lost in the incident we understand these tragedies completely and we sympathize with them. And nobody I mean, I have just been through the week of Boston and I have deep feelings for what happens when you have violence and something happens and you lose people that are near and dear to you. It affects a community, it affects a country. We’re very sensitive to that.
Kerry is here conflating the legitimate use of force by an allied state, against people who knowingly put themselves in harm’s way by challenging a naval blockade, with a terrorist act against the wholly innocent citizens of Boston. His statement insults the citizens of Boston, it demonstrates hostility toward Israel, and it blurs moral distinctions and projects a sense of weakness which can only encourage more terrorist attacks against the United States in the future.
As Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks said, “It’s unconscionable to compare the loss of life resulting from an act of self-defense to the results of cold-blooded, premeditated murder by terrorists.”
In related news, Richard Falk, the Princeton professor emeritus who is a high official of the UN “Human Rights Council,” blamed the Boston terror attacks on US foreign policy and “Tel Aviv.” More at Breitbart:
The Obama administration has long championed the UN Human Rights Council, which it decided to join as one of its first foreign policy moves in 2009. Thanks to the Obama administration, U.S. began a second three-year term on the Council this past January. At the opening of the Council’s most recent session in March, Assistant Secretary of State Esther Brimmer traveled to Geneva to address what she called “this esteemed body.” As author Anne Bayefsky says:
There is nothing about a “human rights” body that countenances the likes of Richard Falk that is “esteemed,” and the United States should resign–effective immediately.
The best that can be said about Kerry is that he is a weak and morally confused man. He doesn’t appear to have changed much since he accused US troops of committing atrocities in Vietnam or since he supported the Sandinistas in the 1980s. We are fortunate that he wasn’t elected President in 2004 (though unfortunate that he could have come so close). Now, like Chuck Hagel, he is Obama’s tool. If he isn’t fired for rhetorically elevating Turkish terrorists to the same moral level as Boston bombing victims, that means Obama agrees with him or indeed that Kerry said what he said because Obama told him to say it.
This isn’t a problem with Kerry in particular. It is a problem with our ruling elite. It is unmoored from any values and prepared to engage in whatever moral equivalency is necessary to please its immediate audience and advance their standing in the elite. They are all despicable.
Some day, after Obama has retired, the LA Times may leak the tape of the party attended by and addressed by Obama on the occasion of “ a 2003 farewell party for Khalidi as he left Chicago to take a job at Columbia University in New York. A source gave Wallsten access to the video and Wallsten used it to describe the going-away party ”” in which speakers honoring Khalidi could be seen “sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel.”
If the tape showed creditable behavior by Obama, it would long since have been leaked or even published as a transcript. Since the Times has concealed it all these years, one can be certain that it does not provide a flattering portrait of the Times’ favorite president.
Since Kerry was the Times’ favorite candidate in 2004, his record has been similarly concealed. Such as his records promised in 2004 and never revealed after the election.
People keep voting for these candidates with secrets and then wonder why they act so differently than was anticipated by their low information supporters.
Agree with Mrs. D – that Kerry is one of the sterling examples of our current ruling elite and the bubble that they live in. I had to pick myself up off the floor, when Kerry accepted the Dem nomination, and tried to run on his record as a military veteran … after making his bones in the anti-war movement and the Winter Soldier matter. I didn’t know a Vietnam-era veteran who didn’t despise him for that. How could Kerry – or his political strategists – even begin to think that would fly? Didn’t they even do a bit research beforehand? But no – he had to go out on stage, pop a salute (very badly – any military DI would have reamed him a new one), exclaim that he was reporting for duty … and keep harping on his veteran status, as if he expected us all to have had amnesia about his activites in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Kerry is so unimpressive in this position, but unfortunately he’s continuing the pedestrian legacy of the past few secretaries. When did the State Dept devolve into a ceremonial earldom for the political bon vivants to retire to?
There was no reason to mention it and the questioner didn’t care to hear it judging by the response. How about the rest of that turgid statement:
the reconciliation between Turkey and Israel is THE critical issue in middle east foreign policy and he’s making analogies to German reconstruction. Wrong.
“a terrorist act against the wholly innocent citizens of Boston” isn’t quite right; the “the” is wrong. The killed and maimed were, no doubt, wholly innocent, but that corresponds to “a terrorist act against wholly innocent citizens of Boston”. If you wish to generalise the point to all the citizens of Boston then we’d have to think of the many citizens of Boston who enthusiastically funded the terrorism of the IRA.
}}} His statement insults the citizens of Boston
They won’t notice. They elected the PoS for a decade or so. That he speaks with a Boston accent and has the “right” politics is all that matters.
Sense and sensibility are not highly regarded in Boston outside of literature discussions.
The question was about Turkish-Israeli “rapprochement”, but he responded by talking about how “we” were able to reconcile with Germany. Strange analogy considering that Turks were allies with Germany in WWI & WWII, and they’ve had strong post-war ties up until recently.
He may have tipped their hand a bit because the real tension they’re worried about isn’t with Israel. They couldn’t care less about that except for how it fits into the leftist anti-colonial narrative. The real problem in their eyes is the strain between Turkey and Europe.
Back when the European Union was a strong shining beacon of globalization & one world govt, Europeans didn’t have any use for Turkey, aside from a supply of cheap labor. Now that the union is unraveling they need them in a big way – to buy their exports which are made from an artificially propped up manufacturing sector, and to buy their worthless bonds to prop up the welfare state.
Two reasons that Turkey grew hostile to Israel over the past few years:
rejected by Germany for EU membership pushed them to look east
decline of Iraq allowed Iran to assert more influence westward.
Result was Turkey & Iran competing sphere’s of influence.
Syria’s collapse now shuts Iran off and opens the door again for cooperation with Israel and a shift in power to a growing decentralized Eastern Mediterranean, a region that’s now seeing it’s 20th century European imposed borders dissolving.
This doesn’t fit into the utopian internationalist’s world view of a small global power elite controlling emerging nations
(nations with a small “n”)