RUSH: Now we are arrived at the ceasefire broken by John Kerry. Brokered. I actually was right the first time. And the Israelis are dumping all over Kerry, accusing him of selling them out. The Regime is having to marshal forces and circle the wagons and defend Kerry against this. People are talking about his blatant incompetence or either his having chosen sides and it’s not with the US ally. It’s a mess.

It is a genuine mess and it’s brought about by a combination of bias and incompetence. And there’s no question about it, it’s also brought about by an utter futility. There is no way any of this could ever succeed. I don’t think anybody is ever gonna officially say that because then if you throw out the diplomatic solution as a possibility there’s only one other thing that can happen, it has to be a military solution, and sadly, that is the only way.

If we were living in sane times, the solution to this would be our ally winning. The solution would be us helping our ally win. But there’s some question as to who is our real ally here, and it’s patently obvious that there’s a question about this. Now, what did Kerry do? Right here, even in the Washington Post it’s written about in the headline: “John Kerry’s Big Blunder.”

His error has been to put so much emphasis on achieving a quick ceasefire, a quick halt to the bloodshed, that he has ended up solidifying the position of Hamas, the Islamist group that leads Gaza, along with two hard-line Islamist nations that are its key supporters, Qatar and Turkey. Now, the Washington Post: This is not bias and it’s not what he intended to do. The poor guy, he’s really trying hard here. And in the process, it says here, John Kerry “has undercut not simply the Israelis but also the Egyptians and the Fatah movement that runs the Palestinian Authority, all of which want to see an end to Hamas rule in Gaza.”

But Qatar and Turkey and Hamas want to continue to run Gaza and wipe out Israel. The Egyptians and I guess the Fatah movement that runs the PA, Palestinian Authority, and Israel all want the end of Hamas. Kerry has solidified Hamas. That’s what’s happened. And it was all done in the effort to get a quick ceasefire because, see, a ceasefire shows diplomacy. A ceasefire shows that a man of peace has been able to influence others with his notions of peace. It’s a crock.

In the first place we’re gonna have to redefine peace as it applies to the situation because it doesn’t mean the same thing to Hamas that it means to the Israelis. It just doesn’t. Peace to them is no Israel. That’s it. And even then there wouldn’t be peace; they’d be mad at something else. But so desirous were they of getting a ceasefire so they could raise their hand and say, “See, look what we did, we’ve broken a ceasefire, no more children are being killed.” Wrong. It’s Hamas that’s engineering the death of its own children. But you don’t dare say that, oh, no, no, no, you don’t dare say that. Something like 160 children have died in the Hamas tunnel setup because Hamas has put them in the line of fire.

Hamas puts rockets in schools and hospitals, launches attacks from schools and hospitals, hoping to garner and get a retaliatory strike on those targets. I watched this stuff being talked about on the media. David Gregory, for example, on Meet the Press on Sunday ripping into Netanyahu about killing children, and I really am beside myself. Does this man, Gregory, really not know what’s going on over there? Is he such a creature of the inside-the-Beltway daily narrative or soap opera? Is he such a creature of that, does he really not know that it is Hamas engineering the death of children on their side of the border for exactly his kind of reaction. Blame Israel for it.

Now, it is said that the Israelis themselves, normally really ahead of the game and up to speed on PR, are losing a key PR effort here. Now, stop and think of that. I understand image and buzz and PR and all that. It is a fundamental aspect of practically everything now. However, social media has a lot of political propagandists on it disguised as average, ordinary people.

And you can’t miss the fact that all over Twitter and all over Facebook are people described as average, ordinary nobodies, just berating Israel for killing kids and, oh, how mean is Israel. And Israel doesn’t have a way of responding to this, it is said, so that stuff stands, and the low-information crowd that’s all over social media buys into the idea that the only bad guy in this quest is Israel, when all of that is PR.

My question is, do people in our media really not know this? And you have to conclude they don’t. It’s either that or they’re just pure biased like they are in US domestic news. So we get this ceasefire. This one’s so bad that they can’t cover for Kerry. I mean, they’re circling the wagons and trying to, but this is such a botched deal that even Regime supporters are having to explain what Kerry did in error. And then they say, “Intentions,” it’s always intentions. “We’re good. He only wanted to help. He only wanted to bring peace to the region. So he might have overstepped and solidified Hamas and Qatar and Turkey, but he was just trying to save the children.” We’re not supposed to criticize him in that regard, see.

The Washington Post says here: “A wiser course, which Kerry rejected in his hunt for a quick diplomatic solution, would have been to negotiate the cease-fire through the Palestinian Authority, as part of its future role as the government of Gaza. Hamas agreed last April to bring the authority back to Gaza as part of a unity agreement with Fatah that was brokered by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

But Kerry didn’t do that. Kerry left the Palestinian Authority out, and he negotiated this ceasefire from the perspective of Hamas. And then it goes to say, “His mistake isn’t any bias against Israel.” Oh, no, no. Can’t be that. No. Kerry’s mistake was rather a bias in favor of a workable, realistic short-term ceasefire. He so wanted a ceasefire. He so wanted peace. He so wanted an end to the killing of children that in his exuberance he just came from the wrong place to get this done. That’s the basic sum of it.

CBS and AP: “A top Israeli official wants President Barack Obama to stop meddling with the Jewish state during its conflict with Hamas in Gaza. Speaking to IsraelÂ’s Army Radio, Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel criticized Obama telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there should be an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

‘Leave us alone,’ Ariel told Army Radio, directing his words at Obama. ‘Go focus on Syria.'” but leave us alone. They don’t think they’ve got an ally in Washington right now.

Let’s go to the audio sound bites. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington. This is amazing. She is in tears asking Kerry to respond to all of his critics here. This was this morning at the State Department. John Kerry and the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Pavlo Klimkin, held a joint presser to talk about the situation in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. And here is Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington.

MITCHELL: The Israeli media has unleashed a fierce attack on you personally, from the left and from the right, unprecedented in practically any of our experience. Others say that if there is an escalation, you are responsible for the increasing bloodshed. Is it hurting your ability to be a mediator here, to have Israel, with these blind quotes from Israeli officials, attacking you so vociferously.

RUSH: Israel simply utters some common sense, they simply utter what’s going on. Fierce attack on Kerry? He doesn’t know what a fierce attack is. Israel is being fiercely attacked. The Israelis are just offering words up for John Kerry, but boy, to the left, words, these people are harmed more by words than anybody I have ever known, these people on the left. So these harsh words out there for Kerry, unprecedented, unprecedented criticism, and she’s just (imitating Mitchell), “Why don’t you go defend yourself? Would you please defend yourself? It’s so horrible, so horrible, the Israelis are attacking you.” And all they’re doing is telling people what’s really going on. Here’s Kerry’s response to what she said.

KERRY: I think there’s, you know, a little bit of energy being expended here unnecessarily, and I do think we will continue to work with our very close friend and ally, and I’m not gonna worry about personal attacks. You know, I’ve spent 29 years in the United States Senate and had a hundred percent voting record pro-Israel, and I will not take a second seat to anybody in my friendship or my devotion to the protection of the state of Israel. But I also believe, as somebody who has been to war, that it is better to try to find a way, if you can, to solve these problems before you get dragged into something that you can’t stop.

RUSH: Well, he must be talking about Vietnam there. (interruption) Yeah. As somebody who’s been to war, I think it’s better to try to find a — hey, how have all these diplomatic efforts worked? I mean, diplomacy, how did that go in Vietnam, Senator, or Mr. Secretary? This is just — I don’t know, folks. This stuff tries my patience. It really does. It’s an affront to common sense. All this is just gobbledygook. It really is. (interruption) Well, Kerry does think he’s very smart, smarter than everybody else. But they all do on the left. They all have this superiorist countenance.

It’s an arrogant condescension that they have, and it comes from all the theorizing and doing the faculty lounge or wherever, and talking about how stupid and dumb and dangerous everybody else is. How they are saviors of this and saviors of that. Everything they touch turns to excrement. Everything they touch just goes to hell, after at least some pass of time. Sometimes immediately, sometimes after a while, but they don’t have a record here of succeeding, using their own beliefs and philosophy. They don’t have a record. There’s nothing they can point to. We have a montage here of Drive-Bys in America just desperate to circle the wagons around Kerry, defend him against this criticism from Israel.

SUSAN MCGINNIS: John Kerry has been pressing both sides to put down their weapons but faces criticism for lack of success.

POPPY HARLOW: Secretary of State, John Kerry, facing fierce criticism.

KATE BOLDUAN: He’s come under withering criticism.

ANDERSON COOPER: Secretary of State John Kerry, catching plenty of heat. Let’s dig deeper tonight into whether that criticism is warranted.

DAVID GERGEN: A savaging of our Secretary of State. I think a lot of Americans feel it’s unfair, that John Kerry has been trying very hard.

ELISABETH HASSELBECK: There is nonstop criticism of Kerry’s attempts.

WOLF BLITZER: The criticism of John Kerry, if you read the Israeli newspapers, is very intense.

MARTIN INDYK: I’m frankly flabbergasted by the piling on here. Secretary Kerry was doing his very best.

RUSH: See, once again it comes down to intentions and effort. It never comes down to whether anything works or not. That’s why you’re never supposed to examine the record, the results of these people and what they do, ’cause it’s never gonna be anything you want to put on the resume. So these people, “He’s working really hard. He’s trying really, really hard. I mean, I can’t believe it. He was doing his best.” Well, that’s not saying much, is the bottom line.

Here’s Susan Rice yesterday in Washington. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations held a leadership assembly for Israel, and Susan Rice spoke.

RICE: Let me also take a moment to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of Secretary Kerry.

RUSH: There you go.

RICE: We’ve been dismayed by some press reports in Israel mischaracterizing his efforts last week to achieve a ceasefire. The reality is that John Kerry, on behalf of the United States, has been working every step of the way with Israel in support of our shared interests. (applause)

RUSH: Right on, right on right. That group, by the way, is one of the people that I took my trip to Israel with, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, but I’m struck by this. I mean, it’s now all about Kerry. Nobody’s firing at Kerry. Nobody’s shooting at him. But now this whole thing has come down to, “Oh, poor John Kerry. He’s working so hard. He wants peace so much. He’s trying so hard, and this effort to mischaracterize him is just too sad.” And this is typical of the left. Make it about the personalities that are not even suffering in any of this.

Move forward to number five before we go to break. No. Let’s take the break or we’re gonna be really up against it. David “Rodham” Gergen is next, and then we move on.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now back to Israel and Hamas. Yeah. David Gergen, which will make anybody yawn, who will make anybody yawn. Last night, Anderson Cooper 94. Question: “What do you think of the criticism by many in the Israeli government of Secretary Kerry in his most recent ceasefire proposal?”

GERGEN: Madeleine Albright, a former Democratic secretary of state, said yesterday, uh, uh, to put it simply, uh, “the world is a mess,” and a lot of these efforts are failing. I think what’s particularly distressing this evening is, uh, that relations between the United States and Israel have fallen to a low point. Uh, I can’t remember a time when there’s been so much acrimony coming from Israel and a unanimous rejection of a peace proposal from an American secretary of state, a unanimous rejection by the Israeli cabinet, and then a savaging of our secretary of state.

RUSH: Is anybody asking: Why would that be? What could possibly explain this? Could it be we have an American president who has disrespected Netanyahu from his first visit to the White House. Do you people remember this? Netanyahu shows up at the White House late in the afternoon for a scheduled meeting with Obama. Obama tells Netanyahu, “Look, I’m having dinner with my family.

“You go in there and you work on what I want to see, and I’ll get back to you later,” and he goes up to the residence, has dinner, and comes back three or four hours later. He really has not been nice to these people, but it goes much, much deeper than. If this is the worst it’s ever been between Israel and the US, why isn’t anybody asking why?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: If we have a deteriorating relationship with Israel, somebody needs to start asking why rather than talking about how John Kerry deserves another Purple Heart. “He’s trying so hard. He really cares! He is really expending a lot of effort. Wow.” Well, he’s not very good then. What other conclusion can we draw? We’ve had countless other regimes, countless other administrations, countless other secretaries of state.

It’s never deteriorated like this. We have evidence. We have disrespect and snubs from Obama to Netanyahu, numerous times — the first one in Washington, as I mentioned not long ago, just before the break. We have… (sigh) Look, it’s patently obvious here that there is a bias against Israel in this Regime, allied status or not. They can sit here and talk, “Our wonderful allied status…” Where is the behavior that accompanies the words?

Folks, my point is this. If anybody thinks — and I’m talking about within our administration. If anybody thinks that Israel is targeting Palestinian children, then they are so corrupt and perverted by what they have been taught and what they believe that they’re almost incorrigible. How an intelligent, functioning, aware human being can willfully ignore the fact that Hamas is putting its own children in the line of fire and wanting them to die just so these Nimrods will have this reaction…

How can anybody miss that? Here is a country which is warning targets 10 minutes in advance of an impending attack! Who has ever done that? I actually saw this in practice. I watched a YouTube video. I think this was over the weekend. It was a building in Gaza, and it just looked like an ordinary, cheap, run-of-the-mill, square-box building with some windows in it. It was reputed to be a Hamas military target.

They had civilians living in it, as every Hamas military target does. The Israelis sent a warning shot, a tiny little rocket that landed on top of the building and exploded. No damage. Maybe a little crater on the top of the building, but didn’t destroy anything, minimal damage. But if you’re in the building you couldn’t miss the fact that it had hit. Ten minutes later the building was devastated. It was leveled.

It was incinerated, and I saw that attack.

Ten minutes later! The Israelis warned whoever was in that building to get out, and why do they do that? Because of this nonsense that they’re targeting children, this nonsense that they’re targeting schools! I mean, this really is — I don’t know — frustrating, but you talk about being outraged? This outrages me that we have so many supposedly smart people who cannot and do not see how Hamas is waging this war.

I look at David Gregory on NBC. I don’t know him.

All I know is that Meet the Press’ numbers are so low you need a telescope to see ’em.

Now, you might be able to see ’em with a microscope.

They’re sitting there scratching their heads wondering why. “Why are our ratings on Meet the Press plummeting?” And then you watch it, and there’s this host who supposedly has a research staff, is a member of the media, is supposedly much more knowledgeable than anybody watching the show, asking the most formulaic, predictable questions of an Israeli official who’s his guest: “Why are you targeting children?”

You just want to pull your hair out, even if you don’t have any. So, why does he think they’re targeting children? Who in their right minds…? Why would we be allied with a country that does that? If country really did that, we would kick ’em to the curb. We would no longer be allies with them and we would publicly humiliate them. (interruption) I know. What it boils down to is this.

What it boils down to is… I’m gonna make this so understandable, it’s embarrassingly simple. John Kerry, Barack Obama, Susan Rice, Samantha Power — I don’t care, take your pick of anybody in the Obama administration. When they see Benjamin Netanyahu, they see the Tea Party. They see a conservative. They see a right winger. They see a rigid, inflexible conservative extremist. That’s why they hate Netanyahu.

That’s why they are sympathetic to anybody. It’s because they hate right-wingers. They despise the Tea Party! IRS, anybody? Netanyahu is nothing more than an extension of the American Tea Party, in their minds. He can’t possibly be right about anything. He’s gotta automatically be an extremist. He’s gotta be one of these guys that think, “Rape? Well, there’s no pregnancy involved.”

He may as well be as Looney Tunes as any other right-winger they think is Looney Tunes. It all boils down to that. This is why I have been so desirous that people learn to see liberals for who they really are, ’cause I’m sick and tired of this constant mischaracterization of us. It’s a mischaracterization that even defies common sense. But that explains the animus toward Netanyahu, I guarantee you.

“He’s a right winger! He’s a Tea Party type.” That’s all it takes. As far as they’re concerned in their closed-mind, no-common-sense world, that’s all you need to know about ’em. “They are untrustworthy, they’re dangerous, they’re extreme, blah, blah, blah,” whatever they associate with criticism. To the phones we return. This is Brian in Jacksonville, Florida. Thank you for waiting sir. It’s great to have you with us. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, good to talk to you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir!

CALLER: Thanks for having me on your program.

RUSH: You bet, sir.

CALLER: You know, I was wondering when Obama and the administration was gonna bring out Michelle Obama for the situation. You know, the hashtag #StopThisWar seems like it would work pretty good.

RUSH: Ah, the problem with that is a hashtag might end up being more successful than their secretary of state, and they don’t want to undermine John Kerry with the hashtag. The hashtag would probably do more benefit than Kerry is doing.

CALLER: That could be a problem. Now, what I don’t understand is how people can’t see that sometimes war just has to end in war. I mean, there has to be violence. Things have to be fought out and done properly. I mean, like you said earlier, this war has been going on forever and it’s gonna continue to go on.

RUSH: If you believe the Bible, it’s never gonna end.

CALLER: Yeah, it’s always gonna be there. What I don’t understand is, like you’re just alluding to, how did all these people not see that radical Islam has one theory: Victory or death. Just like you said earlier: Nobody wants to talk about this. You can’t negotiate with these people. If they do negotiate with you, all they’re trying to do is negotiate —

RUSH: (sigh) Yeah.

CALLER: — so that they can have more time to regroup, find out what their next offensive is gonna be and go at that. And it’s gonna spread and it’s gonna keep on going where eventually there’s gonna be a mass of them versus a mass of everyday people like us, and there’s gonna have to be a war that’s gonna decide them.

RUSH: I can answer your questions: Why isn’t there a hashtag and why don’t they realize that sometimes a war is the only way to solve it? The war being won is the end of conflict. Why don’t they see that? A, they’re liberals. There is a formula for liberalism to gain votes to win support. It is called “compassion” and “peace.” It’s called opposing all of that, no matter the reality of things.

Everything these people do is to secure votes or advance an agenda. It’s never to solve a problem. That’s the best answer I can give you. They’re not there to solve problems! They are there to exploit them, take advantage of them, gain power as a result of the existence of the problem. So in this situation, what do they do? They run around and they wring their hands.

“It’s so terrible! Oh, my God, it’s so bad! Children are dying,” and the women of America think that’s so wonderful, and the liberals of America say, “Oh, God, their hearts are so in the right! Oh, my God, they hate violence!” That’s it. So okay. You secure that group. Don’t forget after 9/11. What did our own State Department do? The Bush State Department, what did they do?

They convened a seminar on what did we do to make them hate us? You know how the Republicans are afraid to criticize Obama because they’re afraid of the charge of racism? Well, the left is afraid to go after militant Islam because militant Islam might nuke ’em, or militant Islam might target them, or militant Islam might get mad at ’em or what have you. So they’re just afraid. If it’s not that, then there’s a worse answer.

I’m not gonna broach it, but it is mystifying nevertheless. We have a genuine, real live enemy, and if you didn’t know better you’d think it’s the Republican Party, listening to these people. Not militant Islam. Not mass illegal immigration. These are stupefying things. But never forget as you ask these questions that to you have you common sense answers: The left seeks to exploit every crisis, every bit of bad news.

This conflict, they’ve got a twofer here. Make no mistake about it. They would love to cut Israel down to side. By the way, there’s a fundamental/foundational thing underneath all of this, and that is Obama and his belief that the United States is the primary cause of a lot of this strife, because we assumed that we were a superpower.

“We had no right to do that! We had no right to impose our way of life. We don’t. We don’t have the right tell Putin how to govern! We don’t have the right to tell anybody what to do — except when it comes time when there’s a right-winger involved like Netanyahu. Well, they have to be dealt with, you know? They’ve gotta be taken down a notch!” Thanks for the call, Brian. I appreciate it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here is Sean in Killeen, Texas. Great to have you on the program. Hello.

CALLER: Rush, it’s good to talk to you. How are you today?

RUSH: Good. Thank you very much. How you doing?

CALLER: I’m doing pretty good, thanks. I wanted to bring something light. I think a lot of people have forgotten about — well, one, I don’t know why John Kerry has any credibility whatsoever considering the fact that he at one point in time said that you either go to college or you go to Iraq, basically insinuating that the American service member is ignorant or uneducated.

RUSH: You are exactly right. In fact, Kerry said a bunch of things, but that one, that’s a good catch. He was doing a commencement speech someplace, or he was speaking at some school, I think it was in Oakland, California, somewhere in Northern California. And he did say exactly what Sean said. Now, the belief is rooted — and I’ve never understood this. The left tries to impugn service members by saying, “Well, the military is the only hope they have of getting an education, finding a job.” ‘Cause when Bush was president everything was so rotten, the military was the only option they had.

If it weren’t for that, they’d have never joined, as a way of attacking Bush and the Bush economy, but it impugned the military. And he did say, “Hey, get an education. Don’t be stupid, get an education or go to Iraq.” Thereby insulting everybody that had volunteered to defend this country. He’s also the guy that automatically believed our Marines were terrorists and rapists and so forth. He’s now secretary of state. He’s a buffoon, clear and present.