The European Union was urged Tuesday to deny any intention to parallel Monday’s attack on a “Jewish French School” to the continuous killings and massacres against children in the Gaza Strip, after Israel lashed out at the statements of EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton.Claiming that the occupying entity is the most “moral country in the world”, Zionist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that “Israel is the most moral country in the world, despite having to fight terrorists operating from within a civilian population. The IDF is doing everything it can to not hurt that population even though it is defending terrorists.”
The number of deaths among civilians in Gaza only during the 2008 war exceeded 1000, and Israel was then condemned for using internationally prohibited weapons and for targeting populated residential areas; not to mention the daily deaths among Palestinians as a result of Israel’s aerial strikes and violations against the strip.
Lieberman did not tolerate likening Gaza’s oppressed children who constantly suffer Israel’s state terrorism, to “Israeli” children who were the target of a criminal on the loose who was reportedly “responsible for two similar shootings in the same region one week earlier in which four off-duty French paratroopers were shot, three of them fatally.”
He demanded Ashton to retract her remarks, considering that “the children that Ashton needs to focus on are the children of south Israel, who live in constant fear of Gaza rocket attacks."
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak shared Liberman’s view indicating that “the comparison that Ashton made was infuriating and far from reality”.“The IDF is operating in Gaza with the utmost caution in order to prevent injury to innocent people. I hope the European Union's foreign minister quickly understands her mistake and retracts her statements,” he added.
For her part, former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that “Ashton's comparison between the murder of children in Toulouse and the massacre Al-Assad is leading in Syria, and the situation in Gaza is reprehensible, infuriating, and wrong.”
In a conference titled "Palestine Refugees in the changing Middle East" that took place on Monday, the EU foreign policy chief remembered the several massacres that took place in the world recently.
Her spokesman Michael Mann said Tuesday that the statement that Ashton made during the conference was “grossly distorted”.
"In her remarks, the High Representative referred to tragedies taking the lives of children around the world and drew no parallel whatsoever between the circumstances of the Toulouse attack and the situation in Gaza," Mann said, stressing that “Ashton was making a general remark about violence against children around the world.”
"She wanted to draw attention to the unfortunate fate of children around the world who lose their lives,” he added.
Source: Websites
20-03-2012 - 15:52 Last updated 20-03-2012 - 15:52
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