AEI’s Michael Rubin on Iran and Israel

"Well, first of all, even though you didn't make this mistake, Michael, so many others have—New York Times and elsewhere—when they said that the Israelis hit the Iranian embassy or the Iranian consulate in Damascus. That's flat wrong. The Israelis hit a building adjacent to both of those. And the Iranians, deciding that Western journalists would just repeat whatever they said, said, 'Oh, this was a diplomatic property,' which was really rich given the fact that the Iranians blew up the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, blew up the American embassies in Kuwait, and Beirut, blew up, I mean, took American diplomats hostage. It was just astounding the way people reacted. But look, when the Israelis targeted these guys, the Israelis targeted these men who were actively plotting terrorism against Israel. It's no different than when we target Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden or his successor Ayman al-Zawahiri. So this notion that somehow the Israelis are to blame because they took out the person who was tormenting and attacking them? That's like blaming, in a case of domestic violence, the person being abused rather than the person who's abusing her."

Read Rubin’s piece Criticism of Israel’s Damascus Strike Is Dead Wrong.