COMMENTARY
by Tom Wilson
November 5, 2014

If you want a clear indication of how the Obama administration really feels about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then you only have to look to the State Department’s reactions to the recent shootings in Israel of two U.S. citizens. The first was the shooting of a Palestinian youth engaged in an act of terrorism against Israeli security forces, the second was an assassination attempt on a rabbi and civil-rights activist. Both were U.S. citizens and yet each shooting drew a very different response from the administration. Conceivably, that would be perfectly appropriate; one would hardly expect someone shot in the midst of a terrorist act to be afforded the same kind of concern as that given to a cold blooded attempted murder of a religious leader devoted to the fight for religious civil liberties. And yet the reactions from the state department were an inversion of the very responses one might expect.

When the Palestinian-American teen Orwa Abd al-Wahhab Hammad was shot dead by Israeli security forces on October 25 he was poised to hurl a Molotov cocktail onto the Israeli traffic passing below on Route 60. Israeli soldiers had successfully intervened to prevent an attack. Yet the State Department could not have been more displeased. Making an issue of Hammad’s dual American citizenship, spokeswoman Jen Psaki demanded a full “speedy and transparent investigation.” Psaki went on to stress that the United States “expresses its deepest condolences to the family of a U.S. citizen minor who was killed by the Israeli Defense Forces.” Shockingly, when pressed on this message of condolences given the circumstances of the shooting, Psaki confirmed that the administration does not consider Hammad a terrorist, this despite his links to Hamas.

Contrast that with how the state department has responded to the shooting in Jerusalem of Rabbi Yehuda Glick, a longtime campaigner for religious freedom and equal worshiping rights for Muslims and Jews on the Temple Mount. The point is made most sharply by a letter–made public over social media–sent by Rabbi Glick’s brother to the Israeli writer and commentator Caroline Glick (no relation). Yitz Glick writes in the letter: “I just wanted to tell you that our family is shocked that we haven’t heard a single word from the US State Dept., the US Ambassador or any representative of the US government regarding the shooting of our brother a US citizen Yehuda Glick…No outrage, no wishes of speedy recovery not a single word from any US official.”……

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