Senator John McCain (R-AZ), one of “President Barack Obama’s most strident critics, said Tuesday that the commander-in-chief helped set the stage for Monday’s attempt to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza,” The Hill reports.
A flotilla of several ships set sail to deliver aid supplies to the Gaza Strip on Monday, but Israeli commandos boarded the ships after warning them not to attempt to dock at Gaza, which is controlled by Islamic extremist group Hamas. After an altercation between the activists and troops aboard the ships, Israeli troops opened fire and killed nine of them.
McCain, Obama’s opponent in the 2008 presidential election, said the White House should have offered a more forceful defense of the U.S.’s Middle Eastern ally.
"This is another step in a chain of unfortunate events beginning with President Obama’s insistence there be a freeze as a precondition for peace talks [with the Palestinians]; a freeze on settlements in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, not a settlement," he said on Fox News on Tuesday night. "The mistaken belief that pressuring Israel on settlement freeze would somehow move them closer and show the Arab world that they were putting pressure on Israel has backfired."
(credit image – daylife/getty)
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