Swords_of_Iron

'Why aren't you in the Hague?' Anti-Israel hecklers disrupt Blinken's final press briefing

During his final press conference as Secretary of State Antony Blinken was heckled twice by anti-Israel protesters. 'You waved the white flag before Israeli fascism.'

Secretary of State Antony Blinken was interrupted twice during his final press briefing as secretary of state on Thursday by anti-Israel hecklers.

The first was Sam Husseini, an independent journalist of Jordanian-Palestinian origin, “Three hundred reporters in Gaza were on the receiving end of your bombs.” He also shouted at Blinken: “Why aren’t you at the Hague?”

He was escorted out by State Department officials.

A short time later, a second heckler began to shout that Blinken "helped destroy our religion, Judaism, by associating it with fascism. You waved a white flag before Netanyahu, you waved the white flag before Israeli fascism."

The heckler also alleged: "Your father-in-law was an Israel lobbyist, your grandfather was an Israel lobbyist, are you compromised by Israel? Why did you let the holocaust of our time happen?" This heckler too was escorted from the room.

This is not the first time this week that Blinken was interrupted by anti-Israel protesters, during his address on the situation in the Middle East at the Atlantic Council on Tuesday, he was interrupted three times by anti-Israel protesters.

During Thursday's press briefing, in response to a question about the delay in Israel's approval of the deal due to Hamas' last-minute demands, Blinken said that this was "not surprising" given how difficult it was to achieve a ceasefire deal over the previous 15 months and that he does not expect this to delay the implementation of the deal on Sunday.

"It's not exactly surprising that in a process, in a negotiation, that has been this challenging and this fraught, you may get a loose end. We're tying up that loose end as we speak. I've been on the phone in one way or another all morning with Brett McGurk, with our Qatari friends, and I'm very confident that this is moving forward and we'll see the start of the implementation of the agreement on Sunday.," Blinken said.

Later, Blinken reiterated his observation that one of the factors that caused Hamas to refuse to agree to a ceasefire was when it thought there was too much "daylight" between the US and Israel and American pressure on Israel, and therefore the Biden Administration tried to keep its disagreements with Israeli policy private.