The man who suggested that the US shoot down Israeli airplanes is at it again. Surveying the Israeli/Hamas conflict, Zbigniew Brzezinski couldn't summon up one word of condemnation for Hamas' intentional targeting of Israeli civilians with thousands of rockets and mortars.
Instead, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser had harsh words for only one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. Appearing on today's Morning Joe, Brzezinski said he didn't include Netanyahu in the category of leaders man enough to negotiate, accusing the Israeli PM of having "scuttled" peace efforts--again without a word of criticism for Hamas. Zbigniew ended his anti-Israel tirade by decrying that "the ideologues, hard-liners, the ones that promulgate confrontation are in charge, and that's what's so hard and so disgustingly destructive." Any disgustingly destructive hard-liners in Gaza, Zbig? View the video after the jump.
Note that Brzezinski was responding to a question from Mike Barnicle as to whether there were people in Israel or within Hamas with the courage to cut a cease-fire deal. But Zbigniew would not summon up one word of criticism for Hamas. Instead, his condemnation focused exclusively on Israel and Netanyahu. Zbigniew Brzezinski: so . . . disgustingly predictable.
MIKE BARNICLE: Dr. Brzezinski, we just heard Prime Minister Netanyahu say a man's got to do what a man's got to do. My question to you, in the Middle East, the men leading Israel, the men leading Hamas, the men leading other institutions, political institutions in Gaza and throughout the Middle East, are any of them man enough to sit down and cut a cease-fire deal?
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I think there are some politicians in Israel who are men enough and women enough to do that. I don't include Prime Minister Netanyahu in that category. I think Madeleine put it extremely well. The issue is larger than just Gaza. The issue is peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The peace, if there were one, would resolve in a large measure of the problem in Gaza. The fact is that honest, dedicated efforts to produce that peace by our secretary of state, by the President of the United States, by previous leaders of the United States, previous secretaries of state of the United States like Madeleine, for example, have made that effort. It's been scuttled by Mr. Netanyahu. That's the fact of the matter. How can you have peace if at the same time someone is incorporating the territory that is at issue, is building on it, is indicating that most of the territory will be part of Israel and that the Palestinians can be a second-class minority and essentially a militant Israeli state? Most Israelis don't support that. Most Israelis are in favor of peace. The majority of the American-Jewish community is in favor of peace. But the ideologues, hard-liners, the ones that promulgate confrontation are in charge, and that's what's so hard and so disgustingly destructive for both Israelis and the Palestinians.
