Obama votes 'present' on 'Palestinian' terror
In an opinion filed Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler complained that the Obama administration was "particularly unhelpful" and the State Department "mealy-mouthed" in refusing to provide official guidance on the complex foreign policy issues involved in the case. Kessler was attempting to decide whether the Palestinian Authority should be granted a trial it recently sought or forced to pay a default judgment because of past decisions not to defend itself against the lawsuit. Gilmore's family claims the PLO's Tanzim branch was responsible for his death in the shooting outside an Israeli government office in East Jerusalem.
"The Executive Branch of the United States has been particularly unhelpful in resolving this difficult Motion," Kessler wrote. "The Court requested that the State Department file a Statement of Interest in order to understand the international ramifications of any order it might enter, and to be apprised of our Government’s position about such ramifications. In this case, as in Knox v. The Palestinian Liberation Organization. ... the State Department declined to do so. Instead it filed the identical mealy-mouthed Notice there as it did in this case. That Notice, for all practical purposes, said nothing and certainly provided no substantive guidance whatsoever to the Court regarding the Government’s position or concerns about any impact a decision might have on the delicate situation in the Middle East."
The U.S. government's two-page filing last month in the Gilmore case is, indeed, vague. After explicitly declining to take a formal position, the government lawyers said this: "The United States supports just compensation for victims of terrorism from those responsible for their losses and has encouraged all parties to resolve these cases to their mutual benefit. At the same time, the United States remains concerned about the potentially significant impact that these default cases may have on the defendants’ financial and political viability."
What could go wrong?
Israel Matzav: Obama votes 'present' on 'Palestinian' terror
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