“There’s no doubt in my mind that Hamas initiated this conflict. … So the ultimate responsibility has to rest on Hamas and the decisions it made.” ~ HRC
Hillary Clinton: 'Failure' to Help Syrian Rebels Led to the Rise of ISIS, an excellent interview by Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic
She offered a vociferous defense of Israel, and of its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as well. This is noteworthy because, as secretary of state, she spent a lot of time yelling at Netanyahu on the administration's behalf over Israel’s West Bank settlement policy. Now, she is leaving no daylight at all between the Israelis and herself.
“I think Israel did what it had to do to respond to the rockets,” she told me. “Israel has a right to defend itself. The steps Hamas has taken to embed rockets and command-and-control facilities and tunnel entrances in civilian areas, this makes a response by Israel difficult.”
I asked her if she believed that Israel had done enough to prevent the deaths of children and other innocent people.
“[J]ust as we try to do in the United States and be as careful as possible in going after targets to avoid civilians,” mistakes are made, she said. “We’ve made them. I don’t know a nation, no matter what its values are—and I think that democratic nations have demonstrably better values in a conflict position—that hasn’t made errors, but ultimately the responsibility rests with Hamas.”
This is an extensive interview and quite telling imo and I present it without additional commentary by me except to say that I am not--nor ever have been--a Clinton supporter.
http://m.theatlantic.com/...
More from Time below:
"‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle"
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton drew a foreign policy line between herself and President Obama in an interview this week, saying the President should have assisted Syrian rebels early in the bloody three-year conflict there, and issuing a dig at his administration’s minimalist doctrine.
The Obama administration’s wariness about assisting rebels out of fear aid would fall into the hands of extremists was misguided and ineffectual, Clinton said in an interview with The Atlantic, and allowed for the rise of Islamic extremists who are now threatening to take over wide swathes of Iraq.
“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said.
http://time.com/...
10:01 AM PT: Countering Clinton's argument h/t to Flyswatterbanjo
Hamas operatives were behind a large volley of rockets which slammed into Israel Monday morning, the first time in years the Islamist group has directly challenged the Jewish state, according to Israeli defense officials.
At least 16 rockets were fired at Israel Monday morning, most of them hitting open areas in the Eshkol region, the army said.
The security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, assessed that Hamas had probably launched the barrage in revenge for an Israeli airstrike several hours earlier which killed one person and injured three more.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/...
10:12 AM PT: She said anti-Semitism was a factor in the unfair international reaction against Israel: “There are a number of factors going into it. You can’t ever discount anti-Semitism, especially with what’s going on in Europe today. There are more demonstrations against Israel by an exponential amount than there are against Russia seizing part of Ukraine and shooting down a civilian airliner. So there’s something else at work here than what you see on TV.”
More: Hillary Clinton blasts 'unfair' world reaction over Gaza, cites anti-Semitism as factor | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/...