Exclusive — Netanyahu Adviser Aaron Klein: Media ‘Parroting’ Hamas Propaganda

Aaron Klein, a political adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Breitbart News on Wednesday that Palestinians had launched attacks against Israel for reasons that had less to do with Israel than “internal Palestinian politics.”

Klein, who was the editor of Breitbart Jerusalem before leaving to join Netanyahu’s political team, spoke with Breitbart News editor in chief Alex Marlow on Breitbart News Daily on Sirius XM Patriot 125.

Recently, Klein noted, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas had canceled and postponed new elections, meaning he would stay in power after more than a decade and a half.

Hamas, the radical Islamic terror organization that would likely have done well in the elections, responded by launching violent attacks to shore up its political position — and the Palestinian government was pleased to exploit the distraction.

Klein noted that Palestinian terror groups, backed by the Iranian regime, had launched unprecedented rocket attacks against the Israeli civilian population. He called it a “double war crime,” because Palestinians also fired from within civilian areas, exposing innocent people to danger.

He criticized the mainstream media for “parroting” Hamas propaganda that there was some kind of threat from Israel to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Israeli police had acted because Palestinians had used one of the holiest sites in Islam to prepare rocks and Molotov cocktails for use against Jewish worshippers in the Western Wall plaza below, he said.

He added that a “real estate” dispute over homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah was also a flimsy “excuse” for the violence, given that Israeli courts — often friendly to Palestinian  litigants — were about to rule on a dispute that had taken decades to litigate.

The Palestinian attacks, he said, were “clearly pre-planned,” and that Israel’s response, named “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” would make Hamas pay a very heavy price for escalating their attacks to Israel’s heavily-populated central cities.

“There are no ‘two sides'” to the dispute, Klein said, arguing that the international community should show a “strong” commitment to Israel’s defense, and strongly condemn Hamas and hold the Palestinian Authority accountable for violence.

“This kind of diplomatic-speak about ‘both sides’ emboldens Hamas,” Klein said, noting that the terrorists started the fight.

Klein would not comment specifically on President Joe Biden’s response, which some have criticized as weak and equivocal.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it). His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.