Israeli soldiers should
be given the Nobel Peace Prize for the "unimaginable restraint" they are
showing in fighting Hamas, Israel's
ambassador to the US has said,
backing his country's right to self- defence. Ambassador Ron Dermer made the
comments at an event hosted by the
Christians United for Israel group late
on Monday, according to a text of the
speech posted on his Facebook page. Comparing Hamas rocket fire on Israel
to Germany's bombardment of
London during World War II, Dermer
slammed those "shamelessly accusing
Israel of genocide and [who] would
put us in the dock for war crimes." "The truth is that the Israeli defence
forces should be given the Nobel
Peace Prize... a Nobel Peace Prize for
fighting with unimaginable restraint." Addressing journalists early on
Tuesday at a separate event, Dermer
did not go quite as far, and admitted
Israel was "not perfect, we make
mistakes". "A missile can hit the wrong place. We
can have intelligence failures. But we
don't target civilians," he insisted. Israel was making "remarkable"
efforts, he added, to get civilians to
clear an area that was about to be hit
including by sending out leaflets, text
messages and dummy bombs ahead
of the real strike. "Israel does not target a single
Palestinian civilian... when a civilian is
killed it's an operational failure... and a
tragedy in and of itself." The Palestinian death toll in the 15-day
war is at 620, most of them civilians,
with 29 Israelis, all but two of them
soldiers, also having been killed. "I think Israel should earn the
admiration of the international
community for the restraint that it has
shown in the face of these threats,"
Dermer told a breakfast organised by
the Christian Science Monitor. "Our soldiers are dying so that
innocent Palestinians can live. That is
what's happened." "You have to ask yourself the simple
question... what would America do...
what would Britain, what would
Canada, what would France do? Ask
yourself how another country facing a
similar threat would respond?" Dermer said many Palestinian civilians
were being used as human shields by
Hamas militants who were placing
their missile batteries in strategic
places such as hospitals and schools,
calling on the United Nations to denounce Hamas for such "war
crimes". "When a school, house, hospital,
mosque is turned into a military
command, or a weapons depot or a
place where you can fire rockets, it
becomes by the rules of war a
legitimate target." He added the Israeli ground offensive
was triggered by Hamas's use of
tunnels to try to sneak into the Jewish
state, saying the Israeli army had
destroyed about 20 tunnels so far. "Militarily and diplomatically if we can
achieve a sustained peace and quiet
for Israel then that's what we're
looking to do," Dermer said.