FM: Ashton's Toulouse-Gaza comparison inappropriate

[dayag]

Interesting that Ashton can't say something against attacks on Jews without attacking Israel and that she is worried about collateral damage in Gaza but not the victims of the rocket attacks from Gaza. Her hatred of Israel is pathological.

Lieberman blasts EU's foreign affairs commissioner's remarks equating attack on Jewish schoolchildren in France to IAF operations in Gaza; says she should 'worry about Israeli children who live under constant fear of Gaza rockets'

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman leveled harsh criticism Tuesday against EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Catherine Ashton over her comparison of the terror attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, to the situation in Gaza, calling them "inappropriate."

Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of Palestinian youths in Brussels on Monday, Ashton said: "When we think about what happened today in Toulouse, we remember what happened in Norway last year, we know what is happening in Syria, and we see what is happening in Gaza and other places."

Lieberman, who is on official visit to China, said he "hopes Ashton will retract her statement."

"Israel is the most moral country in the world and despite the fact that it has to fight terrorist who operate from within civilian population, the IDF makes every effort possible not to harm that population, despite their defense of the terrorists.

"No army is as ethical as the Israeli army," he continued. "The IDF risks its soldiers' lives in order to minimize risk to civilian population. The children Ashton should be worried about are those living in southern Israel, who are in constant fear of Gaza rocket fire."

Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni (Kadima) echoed Lieberman's sentiment, calling Ashton's comments "misguided, wrong and outrageous. The demand that she retracts her statement is right.

"A hate crime or a leader butchering his people cannot be compared to a state's fight against terror, even if civilians are hurt in that fight."

source: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...205206,00.html

[Ziggy]

Ashton's and others of her ilk will never perceive murderous attacks on Jews as heinous. They are blatant anti-Semites who will always validate their personal, anti-Semitism through a looking-glass of hatred.
Imagine if it the victims had been Arab - she would be rabid, frothing from the mouth. Frighteningly, she is not alone. Reading some of the so-called posts in some papers confirm this bilious woman is not alone.

[Aliyah1995]

What a beeyotch!!!!

[Ziggy]

Indeed, there are a few other names I could call her but yours at least can't be censored. Man, to think this woman can utter this viscous attack and retain her position is mind-boggling. Then again, maybe not... anti-Semitism has never lost being fashionable and acceptable in certain circles.

[dayag]

Now as damage control, they are trying to claim Ashton mentioned Sderot as well as Gaza. I don't believe that for a minute.

The European Union issued Tuesday a corrected version of a speech by its foreign policy chief which had angered Israel because it appeared to link a French school shooting and Gaza.

The new transcript of Catherine Ashton's remarks mentions the situation of children in both Gaza and the southern Israeli town of Sderot after the first version only mentioned the Palestinian territory...

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...205635,00.html

[Bill Sticker]

Hers a better comparison for you. What the SAS did in in "operation Flavius Gibraltar 1988", Mossad can also do in Toulouse

[farmboy]

Ashton draws a wage too. Nobody in government is ever held accountable and yet they retire after just a few years on huge pensions. The whole western world needs a revolution.

[dayag]

From a speech by Ashton in Brussels on March 19, 2012 “at the high-level conference Engaging youth – Palestinian Refugees in the changing Middle East”:

“Let me just say a little bit too about what the European Union believes is so important about UNRWA. It's not a coincidence that the European Union is the biggest and the most loyal donor. Our donor activity started in 1971 and in the last 11 years we provided over € 1.3 billion in support of UNRWA’s work - along with contributions from EU Member States, the EU overall contributions in 2010 and 2011 accounted for almost 40% of the total support. It is a big effort in difficult financial circumstances.
And I believe it is because it matters so much. I am not giving you figures so that you feel a sense of success from the EU, but so you would feel a sense of commitment from the European Union. Our support goes to where it matters most: health, schools, humanitarian needs, and shelter. The ultimate goal however is for Palestinians to be masters of their own fate, in their own state.
Our goal, consistently spelt out over time, is supporting the creation of a Palestinian state that will not need to depend on donor support, will stand in its own right and will exist in peace and security side by side with all its neighbours. […] we leave no stone unturned and we will do everything possible to try and meet circumstances for the completion of the Middle East Peace Process. We know too that the Palestinian refugees face additional challenges; they leave [sic!] in countries which even after so many years they cannot consider home. This is why UNRWA’s work is so special: it has gone beyond the provision of universal needs and helped them establish a sense of identity that otherwise is lost to the world, an identity which people here are absolutely proud of. And that comes about through many things that UNRWA does.”

Commentary from Petra Marquardt's blog:

The highlighted sentence in this quoted passage is truly remarkable, because the EU’s foreign policy chief basically agrees here with the preposterous Arab notion of “positive discrimination,” which is simply a euphemism for the cynical policies of the Arab states that claim they are doing the Palestinians a favor by barring them from integrating into the countries they live in and forcing them to artificially preserve a distinct identity that focuses on the unrealistic demand of a “right of return”. (See e.g. “No refuge: Palestinians in Lebanon.” Working Papers Series No. 64, Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford, June 2010; pdf)

To be sure, Ashton is in a way quite right, because UNRWA is indeed “special”: while the many millions of other refugees from the late 1940s were expected to adjust themselves pragmatically to changed political realities, UNRWA enabled the Arab states that had failed in their efforts to undo Israel’s establishment to keep the Palestinian refugees as political pawns who would pass on their refugee status for generations in order to keep their grievances alive and politically potent.

The problematic role of UNRWA has often been criticized, most recently by the Palestinian writer and academic Mudar Zahran, who passionately argued that “UNRWA's persistence in keeping the Palestinians refugees in abysmal, overcrowded slums is harming the Palestinians” and suggested that it might be time to conclude that UNRWA has become “an obstacle to peace in the Middle East.”

Zahran also points out that “UNRWA is now the UN's largest entity with over 30,000 employees. It is such a boondoggle of a jobs program, it almost cannot let the Palestinian refugee problem be solved: if it did, 30,000 people would be out of work.”

source: http://blogs.jpost.com/content/ashto...fostered-unrwa