Ron Paul: Don’t Palestinians Have a Right to Defend Themselves Too?
Tuesday August 5, 2014
Paul elaborates:
And [Israel Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu says 'Don’t second-guess me, don’t push a peace treaty on me because I’m gonna defend this country.' I think Israel absolutely has a right to do this, but never once have I heard on TV — it might have been said, but I haven’t heard it yet — that the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves because they must feel oppressed. You know, they can’t go anywhere. They can’t go back and forth to Israel. They can’t go into Egypt. So they feel pretty well trapped too, but nobody says that this entrapment they have gives them a right to defend themselves from being imprisoned in this particular area.Paul then expresses his desire that the US government would just keep out of the conflict and stop its funding of Palestine and much larger funding of Israel, including $225 million dollars more for Israel’s Iron Dome system that Congress passed on Friday. Paul suggests this foreign aid creates a “moral responsibility” in the US for deaths of innocent people.
Watch Paul’s complete commentary here:
In addition to suffering from severe restrictions on their ability to travel and the ongoing war, Gazans have also been subject to a trade blockade. Read here a brief account of some ways in which long-term blockade of Gaza and the ongoing war combine to make life in Gaza difficult.