Israel demands retractions from Obama and Kerry

Public Security Minister Gilead Erdan was instructed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to phone a “high-ranking US source” Thursday and demand that President Obama and Secretary Kerry publicly retract the State Department’s charge that Israel was using “excessive force” against Palestinian terror. This demand is unprecedented and marks a crisis in Israeli-US relations.

State Department spokesman John Kirby tried to backtrack on Secretary John Kerry’s earlier comment that the current violence was due to “a massive increase in settlements,” but he then added, “Ongoing settlement activity” is “imperiling the viability of eventually getting to a two-state solution.”
Erdan commented that anyone in his right mind knows what US police officers would do if they had to deal with terrorists armed with knives and meat cleavers for murdering people in New York and Washington. Therefore it is up to President Obama and Secretary Kerry to disavow the State Department’s remarks as unfounded and distortions of fact and clarify Washington’s position.
Erdan told Army Radio that “the US State Department has traditionally been hostile to Israel.”
In another interview, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon accused Washington of "misreading" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – long after the claim that it was the source of Middle East unrest was discredited.
Shooting Palestinians who wield knives is clearly self-defense, he said. He added that he hears nothing but praise for Israel’s high military standards of conduct from the American and other generals he meets. So where did the charge of “excessive force” come from? Ya’alon asked.