The State Department has discovered that when you mindlessly parrot Arab criticisms of Israel, you're likely to be called out for lying.  On Wednesday, the Obama administration claimed that Israel was using "excessive force" in trying to stop Palestinian terrorist attacks.  This brought a strong statement of condemnation from Prime Minister Netanyahu, who said that fair-minded people could see that force was justified.

Then on Thursday, one reporter asked spokesman John Kirby if "Israelis shooting Palestinians armed with knives" constituted "excessive force."  Kirby refused to list any examples.

Washington Examiner:

Kirby didn't name any examples of how Israel might be using force against Palestinians excessively Wednesday when he made the claim, and refused against on Thursday when he was asked.

"I mean, Israelis shooting Palestinians armed with knives, is that something somebody is seeing as excessive?" one reporter asked him.

"Yesterday we had this discussion, and I didn't get into detail then, I'm not going to get into detail now," Kirby replied.

Kirby also refused to say whether the Obama administration agrees with Netanyahu that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas needs to do more to stop encouraging attacks against Israelis. When asked if the U.S. agrees with Netanyahu, Kirby dodged and offered a general statement that the violence should stop.

"I think I would just reiterate what we said before, and we'll continue to stress that the violence needs to stop," he said. "There's no excuse for the intentional killing of innocent people, for the use of terrorism as a tactic."

Kirby did, however, seem to walk back a statement from Wednesday in which he appeared to say the U.S. has seen reports that Israeli security forces have used excessive force. When asked about this Wednesday, he said the U.S. is concerned about reports of violence against "civilians," and when asked if that means the U.S. has seen reports involving Israeli security forces, he said, "we've seen reports."

Ah, those ubiquitous "reports."  Which reports?  From where?  By whom?

How lame is that?

In their eagerness to declare solidarity with the terrorists attacking innocent Israelis, the Obama administration have gone to great lengths to identify armed Palestinians bent on murder as "civilians."  At the same time, they inadvertently expose the stupidity of adhering to a policy of opposing "disproportionate responses" to Palestinian attacks.  If it takes a gun to kill a terrorist who wishes to use a knife or an ax to attack Israeli citizens, by any stretch of the imagination, that must be considered justifiable.  Perhaps the Obama administration would feel better if Israeli security forces were similarly armed with knives in order to combat the terrorists. 

Ted Cruz has called on John Kerry to resign over these stupid, unsupportable remarks.  It won't happen, but Kerry and the entire American government should be ashamed of siding with the enemy of Israel in the midst of this latest round of violence.