‘Pretext is a big word,’ State Department spokesman scolds Palestinian reporter

Matthew Miller, the U.S. State Department spokesman, pushed back twice on Monday during a press conference when Said Arikat, D.C. bureau chief for Al-Quds, suggested that Israel targeted the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone on the “pretext” of killing the Hamas leader Mohammed Deif.

“You don’t feel that the attack on Mawasi that killed close to 100 Palestinians, injured about 300 others and so on, under the pretext of targeting Hamas leaders, which is really a very convenient—,” Arikat began.

“A ‘pretext’ is a big word, Said. Just I—,” Miller interjected.

“Under the pretext—I mean, okay, we had—,” Arikat said, per the official State Department transcript.

“I just want to make sure that’s the word you mean,” Miller said.

“Okay. I mean, under the claim that they were targeting Hamas leaders, which they really—they never have to prove anyway,” Arikat said. “They can say, ‘We know that this X person was there and Y person was there, so we target them. We kill all these people, then nobody is going to ask us.’”

Arikat, who frequently criticizes the Jewish state in his ostensible questions, added that “the most they can do is just, ‘We will launch an investigation,’ which we never hear the results of.”

“So you don’t feel that such a—such a crime, really—using F-35s to bomb two places, one of them against the respondents, the first responders and so on, while the other was going on—you don’t think this is an attempt by the Israeli government to just basically say, ‘You can go fly a kite,’ so to speak, when it comes to negotiations?”

“I guess I don’t understand the logic of the question,” Miller said.

Arikat said that “what we have seen in statements and, indeed, in the negotiations that Hamas is really—at least it appears to be committed to the negotiations and so on—but what we have seen is a pattern by the Israeli government that every time you get close to results, we get something like this.”

“We get a bombardment that—in the hope that it will scuttle and leave it—leave it to keep the onus on Hamas, so to speak,” the Palestinian reporter added. “So we’re not concerned about the Palestinians are committed to this ceasefire, but are you certain that Israel is committed to the points that were stated by the president on May 31?”

After the State Department spokesman noted that Israel is “committed to the proposal that they put forward that the president publicly described on May 31. They have said that publicly, they have affirmed that to us privately and they have committed to trying to work to reach a ceasefire and bridge the remaining differences.”

When another reporter accused Arikat of justifying political violence, Miller said, “There are people in this room who come and raise their hand and ask questions, and I’m going to call on them.”