In a radio interview set to air Sunday, a senior leader of Hamas asserts the anonymous White House officials referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as "chickensh-t" reflect the Obama administration's "sincere" feelings.
The interview with Salah Bardawil, senior Hamas leader and member of the Palestinian Parliament, airs Sunday night on "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio" on New York's AM 970 The Answer.
A recording of the interview was obtained by WND.
Asked for his thoughts on the "chichensh*t" comments, the Hamas strongman told Klein, "It's not a secret that Obama felt many times disappointed from Mr. Netanyahu. And it's not a secret that Benjamin Netanyahu's policy was not acceptable by the administration."
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Continued Bardawil: "The problem is that Obama, in spite of the fact that we feel that these feelings are sincere and true vis-à -vis Netanyahu, he ever translated these emotions against Netanyahu to actions on the ground in order to change the situation … which shows the decision making center is not exclusively in the hands of the president but in the hands of the whole American establishment that judges that Israel is in the strategic interests of the United States. This is why these declarations of the sources in the administration were not translated into changing the situation on the ground into pushing the situation forward but keeping the situation as it is."
Bardawil, who understands English, spoke to Klein in Arabic, and his words were then translated on-air into English by a language expert.
On Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly phoned Netanyahu to apologize for the comment, quoted by the Atlantic as stemming from anonymous sources within the White House.
Kerry reportedly told Netanyahu that the comments "do not reflect the position of the United States."
One day earlier, Kerry said that insulting the character and leadership of the Israeli premier is "disgraceful, unacceptable and damaging."
"I don't know who the people that said those things are, but it made our lives much harder," added Kerry.
The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg reported senior Obama administration expressed "red-hot anger" at Netanyahu for "pursuing settlement policies on the West Bank, and building policies in Jerusalem, that they believe have fatally undermined Secretary of State John Kerry's peace process."
The officials reportedly told Goldberg that Netanyahu is a "chickensh-t" on matters related to the so-called peace process and added that he's a "coward" on the issue of Iran's nuclear threat.
Another administration official was quoted by Goldberg as saying, "The good thing about Netanyahu is that he's scared to launch wars."
The official continued: "The bad thing about him is that he won't do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he's interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He's not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he's not [Ariel] Sharon, he's certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He's got no guts."