“A Palestinian state does not guarantee Israeli security. It is a recipe for Israel’s destruction,” Likud MK Feiglin says.
Politicians on the Israeli Right expressed frustration with US President Barack Obama’s focus on the need for Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians in his speech on Tuesday to the UN General Assembly in New York.
The politicians were particularly outraged by Obama’s statement that Israel’s security as a Jewish and democratic state depends on the realization of a Palestinian state.
“That is one of the worst statements by an American president in history,” said Transportation Minister Israel Katz, who heads the Likud’s governing secretariat. “Israel’s existence does not depend on anything, especially not the Palestinians. The US helps Israel, but we have always known to defend ourselves with our own force. We desire peace, but we will not take unnecessary risks and we will not accept any solution that endangers our existence.”
Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon called upon Netanyahu to resist pressure from Obama on the Palestinian issue, which he said he expects will only increase with time.
He also criticized Obama’s outreach to Iran in the speech.
“At a time when steely resolve is needed in dealing with the Iranian nuclear issue, we are instead hearing of premature concessions,” Danon said. “If this is the new policy of the US administration, then our government must remain vigilant and ready for the possibility of huge American pressure in the current talks with the Palestinians.”
Danon, who heads the Likud central committee, said he fully trusted Netanyahu to safeguard Israel’s vital national interests in dealing with Iran and in the discussions with the Palestinians. But he was less optimistic about the international community, which he said must remain very wary of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who he called a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“I am worried that some of our Western allies will want to view him as a moderate, to give themselves an excuse to disengage from this issue,” Danon said. “Now is not the time for concessions toward the regime of the ayatollahs. Instead, we should press forward with crippling sanctions that will send a clear message of resolve warning the Iranians that until they completely dismantle their nuclear program, they cannot act as full members of the international community.”
Likud MK Moshe Feiglin blamed what he did not like in Obama’s speech on Netanyahu and his predecessors for accepting the creation of a Palestinian state. He said that when Israel recognized a Palestinian people and its rights, it began a process in which the right for there to be a Jewish state was delegitimized.
“The truth is the land is either ours or theirs, so if we recognize another nation’s right to our land, we lost our rights,” Feiglin said. “Obama is misleading Israeli citizens. A Palestinian state does not guarantee Israeli security. It is a recipe for Israel’s destruction.”
Labor leadership candidate Isaac Herzog responded to the US president’s speech by saying that Netanyahu needed to choose between Obama and the family of nations and rightists in his coalition.
“We don’t need Obama to tell us that not reaching a diplomatic solution with the Palestinians and keeping the status quo could endanger the continued existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” Herzog said. “Israel must decide whether to bring about a diplomatic agreement or wait for the world to force one on us.”
Felix Quigley Said:
We need a United Front, a Workers United front…Problem-.Filipinos,Arabs, Chinese, Turks, Romanians, Thais and some others are the only real workers around here.
Bill Narvey Said:
“Right, left and in between Jewish divisiveness on Jewish, Israel and the Obamaled Western policies as regards Israel and Palestinians, is has been and remains a major self inflicted impediment to Jewish and Israeli empowerment in their own causes and best interests.”
Bill you say divisions are the problem. But unity on what? What is the perspective or you could also say what is the programme?
Yamit, before replying, what is it that you don’t understand?
Bill Narvey Said:
Pls repeat in simple concise English.
Mladen, good post on your blog, but I disagree with your assertion that no one cares about Obama’s incompetent leadership.
Domestically, those who care, have been stymied by Obama, his administration, the Democratic Senate and the MSM that provide Obama cover, defence against criticism and support for his views and by dissing Obama’s critics at every opportunity.
Just one eg. Re Obamacare, the Republican effort to fund the government but defund Obamacare has been presented as a Republican effort to shut down the government. The fact that such would be the result only with the Senate rejecting Congress’s bill and if not Obama vetoing it. Obama further has declared he will not negotiate on the matter at all. The more this Republican effort is presented to the people as the Republicans wanting to shut government down, the more it will come to be believed. Republicans for their part have been unable to put the need to defund Obamacare front and center.
Republicans, are now seen as not up to the task of countering Obama and worse still, Republicans are self destructing with their internal divisions and strife.
Some say that if the Republicans would just let Obamacare go forward and self destruct on its own, they would be doing themselves a big favor. Their failure in countering Obama on Obamacare is going to put them at risk in the upcoming November 2104 election that it will not be Obamacare they can take advantage of for a win, but for the Democrats to hammer away at Republican incompetence/ineffectiveness to keep the Senate and win back the House.
If the Democrats win a majority in Congress and the Senate, the brakes will come off the Obama train that will be free to run headlong to the transformative end of the line Obama has in mind for the American people.
As regards foreign relations, most, if not all Western leaders including Obama care lots about the turmoil in the Mid East and growing influence of Russia and China in that region and how that threatens their nations’ interests and security. All leaders however, simply have no better clue than Obama as to what to do about these threats.
President Obama’s abysmal leadership – yet nobody cares
http://www.madisdead.blogspot.co.il/2013/09/president-obamas-abysmal-leadership-yet.html
Obama is just trying to ‘cash in’ like a ‘thief in the night’. He had nothing to do with Syria backing down yet he moves in to take credit thinking that this is the time he can move ahead with his agenda for Israel. I saw only part of that speech. Couldn’t even stomach looking at his mug….I had heard enough. Trying to say that Israel and the Palestinians have come to the table – Israel by releasing prisoners and BB committed to a Palestinian state….STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK ISRAEL. DO NOT STAND FOR THIS.
Assailed from both left and right, Netanyahu just can’t get a break. Right, left and in between Jewish divisiveness on Jewish, Israel and the Obamaled Western policies as regards Israel and Palestinians, is has been and remains a major self inflicted impediment to Jewish and Israeli empowerment in their own causes and best interests.
I will believe these supposed rightists if and when they contrive to retrieve the leadership of the Likud from Binyamin Netanyahu, along with his destructive private deals with Kerry, Obama and their fading exceptionalist empire.
Every Jew ought to say to himself every morning upon awakening:
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Abba Eban was only half right. The Jews, as well as the Arabs, ‘never lose an opportunity to lose an opportunity’. We Jews have been brain dead in failing to ever insist that the Arabs are the true ‘occupiers’, that all the land of Israel belongs to the Jews and that the Arab occupiers must find another ‘home’ elsewhere. It is Jewish cowardice and the failure of Judaic spirit that caused our corrupt leaders to invite the Arabs to stay in the first place. In 1948 the Jewish declaration of independence invited the Arabs to stay and stay they did. It is only logical that the Arabs in the territories should want their own state and and logical for them to hate the Jews because they are so indoctrinated from childhood on. We do not do the Arabs any favor by offering them a ‘Palestinian’ state inside Israel which only exacerbates and prolongs the conflict.
The problem is not Obama.
The problem is with Jews negotiating away their land to an enemy dedicated to their destruction. As long they do not have the courage to walk away from the talks, what they fear most could well become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And no its not the Arabs either. The fault lies in the Jews themselves.