HH: Well, I want to begin with this afternoon, the Carter Center issued a statement that “expresses regret for loss of life, and condemns the unprovoked and illegal Israeli assault on the humanitarian Gaza aid flotilla in international waters.” It then goes on to quote former President Carter as saying directly, “these tragic deaths are a terrible reminder that the failed policy of besieging Gaza mainly hurts civilians.” President Carter goes on to say, “there is no way to realize the goal of a two-state solution as long as the people of Gaza remain isolated and deprived of their basic human rights.” And then the Carter Center closes after a direct quote from Carter by saying, “the frequent use of indiscriminate and disproportionate force against civilian targets with impunity must end for peace and justice to prevail in the Middle East.” Your reaction, Ambassador Oren?
MO: Well, it’s quite extraordinary, Hugh. Let’s see. We have in Gaza an organization called Hamas, which violently overthrew the legitimate Palestinian leadership there, killed 350 of them, threw them off the top of roves, an organization that states in its covenant that its goal is the destruction of the state of Israel, and the destruction of the Jewish people worldwide, which proceeded to fire 10,000 rockets into Israel, forcing Israel to put a naval blockade to deny Hamas further rockets. And we are the aggressors? Let me get this straight. I think you have to be, you know, I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t talk about the psychology behind this, the pathology. But I think you have to be deeply, morally corrupt and distorted to issue a statement like that.
HH: Earlier tonight, Larry King spoke with President Obama, and asked him about the Jimmy Carter statement. Here’s that exchange.
LK: Former President Carter has condemned the Israeli raid against those ships in the flotilla trying to break the blockade of Gaza.BHO: Right.LK: Where do stand on that? A former American president has condemned it.BHO: Well, the United States with the other members of the UN Security Council said very clearly that we condemned all the acts that led up to this violence. It was a tragic situation. You’ve got loss of life that was unnecessary. And so we are calling for an effective investigation of everything that happened, and I think the Israelis are going to agree to that, an investigation of international standards, because they recognize that this can’t be good for Israel’s long term security.LK: Premature, then, to condemn Israel?BHO: Well, I think that we need to know what all the facts are, but it’s not premature to say to the Israelis, and to say to the Palestinians, and to say to all the parties in the region, that the status quo is unsustainable. We have been trying to do this piecemeal for decades now. And it just doesn’t work. You’ve got to have a situation in which the Palestinians have real opportunity, and Israel’s neighbors recognize Israel’s legitimate security concerns, and are committed to peace.
HH: Ambassador Michael Oren, he did not condemn Jimmy Carter’s center’s condemnation of Israel, but he also did not join with it. What’s your reaction to the president’s response?
MO: Well, the president’s response, needless to say, is far more measured. And we agree that the status quo in Gaza is not to our liking as well. We are struggling mightily to try to reconcile our desire to meet the civil needs of the civilian population in Gaza with our right and our duty to protect our citizens from thousands of Hamas rockets. And it’s not an easy call, as we’ve seen this week. But we’re committed to it, and we’re engaged in a conversation with the Obama administration of possible means of changing the status quo. I can’t say right now whether I’m sanguine about the success of such measures. We’ve certainly tried in the past. But we have committed to try to seek a better status quo. Ultimately, the only solution is peace.
HH: Was it…
MO: If there’s a peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, then people like Hamas become irrelevant. But that peace is the last thing that Hamas wants.
HH: Was it appropriate for the United States to join in Monday’s statement from the Secretary-General and the Security Council?
MO: You know, we appreciated the administration’s efforts to try to mitigate some of the language in that statement. The statement was not entirely to our liking, needless to say. But we understand that a major diplomatic effort was made so that the outcome could have not, was not far worse.
HH: Would it have been better if we had vetoed it?
MO: Well, it wasn’t even a question of veto, because it was what’s known as a Security Council presidential statement, which is a consensual statement. It doesn’t require a veto, or even enable a veto.
HH: Would it have been better if the United States had declined to agree with the statement?
MO: I think you’d have to ask the president that.
HH: It was said yesterday by Secretary of State Clinton that the boycott, the embargo, is unsustainable in the waters off of Gaza. Does Israel agree with that, Mr. Ambassador?
MO: We agree that we’d like to find a better way of denying Hamas rockets. If the Secretary of State has ideas about how that might be done, we would be very, very happy to hear them. And we’ll be anxious to hear her suggestions.
HH: Unsustainable is code, though, and not very hard to decipher code, this can’t go on, this has to end. Will Israel abandon this boycott if Hamas remains in power in Gaza?
MO: We will not.
HH: Is that an absolute commitment that they will not walk away and allow ships that have not been inspected to land there?
MO: We will not.
HH: Let me ask you about the idea…
MO: Hugh, we cannot. We cannot. You have to understand that missiles coming, rockets coming to Gaza through the tunnels can come in one at a time. And that’s bad enough. They now have missiles that can reach downtown Tel Aviv. But if ships are allowed in, they can bring in thousands of rockets. We have intercepted three of these ships already, massively laden with munitions. If you want Hamas to become an Iranian state on the Mediterranean, not only will it mortally threaten Israel, it will kill any chance of peace, because the Palestinian Authority will also crumble. I don’t think any administration wants to see that happen.
HH: Thirty seconds, Mr. Ambassador. Has the American media reported this incident fairly?
MO: I think there’s been, for the most part, it’s been fair. But just, you know, in a way, just the obsessive focus on it in itself creates a gross imbalance. Israel defending itself against a flotilla organized by a radical Islamic group linked to al Qaeda, and our commandos doing the utmost to avoid inflicting casualties, landing on these boats with paintball guns, and somehow, this has become the focus of what basically is a media frenzy. I would call your attention to the fact that this week, 27 Afghan civilians were killed in fighting in Afghanistan, and it made the back page of the paper.
As I said, it’s just been a major media story all week long, Hugh. I’ve been on dozens of interviews. And it makes you wonder. So many other things are going on in the world. I gave one example before the break, I don’t know if you heard it, that earlier this week, there were 27 Afghan civilians that were accidentally killed by the U.S. forces in combat. It made the back page of some paper. There’s no call for an international investigation of it. Where’s the balance in it? Why is it when Israel has to take steps to defend itself, and in the most legitimate way in full accordance with international law, why then does that become a media frenzy for more than a week?