By RON KAMPEAS/JTA
Groups which are usually loathe to publicly criticize the Israeli gov’t have changed their tune in wake of appeal by John Kerry.
WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s almost boilerplate: The American Jewish community asks a foreign leader with whom it has cultivated a close relationship to kindly tell firebrands in the leader’s government to pipe down and fall in with an established policy that happens to be embraced by the U.S. government.
Greece? Romania? Hungary? Russia?
Try Israel.
In a rare rebuke of a sitting Israeli minister, three major centrist Jewish groups in recent weeks have criticized Naftali Bennett, the economics chief in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government, for saying that the two-state solution is a “dead end.” Bennett also called on the government to annex the West Bank.
“Minister Naftali’s remarks, rejecting outright the vision of two states for two peoples, are stunningly shortsighted,” David Harris, the American Jewish Committee’s executive director, said in a June 17 statement. “Since he is a member of the current Israeli coalition government, it is important that his view be repudiated by the country’s top leaders.”
Also repudiating Bennett, who heads the right-of-center Jewish Home party, were the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the umbrella body for public policy groups, although the JCPA statement did not name him personally.
Typically loath to publicly criticize the Israeli government, centrist groups in recent years have been the targets of liberal critics who charge that they are, at best, lukewarm supporters of Israeli-Palestinian peace. But coming in the wake of an appeal to Jewish groups by US Secretary of State John Kerry to press “leaders” to back the peace process, the latest statements suggest otherwise.
Each of the groups that repudiated Bennett framed their statements in the context of Kerry’s bid to restart the peace process and come as Israeli settler leaders opposed to a two-state solution are making their case in Washington.
The initial reaction to Kerry’s appeal was hesitant, but in recent weeks a number of mainstream groups have warmly embraced it. Participants in a closed-door meeting June 26 of Jewish leaders and Democratic US senators said that Michael Kassen, the president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, “heartily” embraced Kerry’s initiative, albeit with a caveat: The main obstacle to peace, he reportedly said, is Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
A similar point was made by ADL National Director Abraham Foxman in a recent Op-Ed calling on Netanyahu to rein in Bennett and Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon, who also has declared the two-state option dead.
“It would be good for Mr. Netanyahu to find as many occasions as possible to reinstate his commitment to a two-state solution, and make clear once again that it is he that wants to move forward through negotiations, while it is Mahmoud Abbas who is injecting rejections and is the true obstacle to peace,” Foxman wrote.
AIPAC, notably, declined an invitation to attend the meeting June 27 between Dayan and top Republicans, including Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the chairwoman of the committee’s Middle East subcommittee; and Rep. Pete Roskam (R-Ill.), the party’s chief deputy whip.
Instead, the Zionist Organization of America and the Republican Jewish Coalition led the Jewish contingent at the meeting. The ZOA has counter-rebuked the Jewish groups that criticized Bennett and Danon. Foxman, the ZOA said in a June 24 release, was “suppressing opposition to a Palestinian state.”
Ros-Lehtinen declined to comment, and Royce and Roskam did not return requests to do so. But an official in the office of the House Republican Conference, which organized the meeting, said the meeting did not constitute an endorsement of Dayan’s call to bury the two-state solution. The official said there was sympathy with Dayan’s view that Kerry’s mission was counterproductive and potentially harmful to US interests.
There was interest as well in a proposal by Dayan that Congress hold a hearing on how Jewish settlement has improved the lives of Palestinians; Palestinians say the expansion of settlements and the security measures that protect settlers have seriously impeded and frustrated daily life in the West Bank.
“The discussion focused on the historic and strategic significance of Judea and Samaria, and on the current obstacles to peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, such as Holocaust denial, hero worship of terrorists, and incitement to violence by the highest levels of the Palestinian Authority,” said an email from the House Republican Conference to Jewish groups in the capital. “We also discussed the positive ways in which Arabs and Jews currently coexist in Judea and Samaria, including the tremendous economic and jobs boost that Jewish settlements have brought to the area since 1967.”
Dayan in an interview in the House Republican Conference office immediately after the briefing said he was pleased with the reception.
“I was I must say even overwhelmed by the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee” – Royce – “saying he reads all my articles,” Dayan said.
@ yamit82:
Amen!! And many thanks for the background details. I wish that Israeli leaders would start to push back publicly against this corrupt American old guard and open up the path for new Jewish leadership. I am almost jealous of those Egyptians who pushed out Morsi and defied his corrupt patron, Hussein Obama, in the process.
yamit82 Said:
Would love too. I would like to see Mt Tabor.
yamit82 Said:
I invest in Israeli businesses.
yamit82 Said:
Whoa there Cowboy, My Grandparents spoke Polish and my Dad[born in the USA] understood Polish. My Grandfather always said,” In Poland you had to speak six languages to buy a cabbage in the market”.
Behaving as the good court Jews that they are. That includes AIPAC. I have to laugh at the antisemites depiction of AIPAC and the Jewish lobby as pulling strings in Washington when in fact the Jewish groups take orders from Washington.
There are two models of Galut Jews:
One like the Polish Jews who never were really or wanted to be integrated into Polish society to the point where most never learned Polish.
They were Strangers in a Strange land existing on the sufferance of the Polaks, Ukrainians and Russians. These Jews had no identity crisis and Withal their quibbling with each other they were full Jews in all things.
The other model is the German, French and American Model were the populations of Jews were fully integrated into those societies.
There is here no identity crisis, these so called Jews are Americans, Canadians, British, French and German.
I reject any Jew whose primary loyalty is other than Jewish Loyalty, First to other Jews and secondly to Israel. Yeah I know that’s an impossibility so the next best thing for we here in Israel is to seek a formal divorce.
Israel bonds are still a good investment and those who wish to invest are free to do so. Jews who wish to visit as tourists…WELCOME!
For all the rest, stay the hell away from us, We don’t need your money, advice and certainly not your unsolicited and unwanted interference in our affairs.
This is not Liberal/conservative-left/right issue as Americans are conditioned to think it’s a Jewish and a Jewish national thing. It’s the assumption of rights by those who have no skin in the game and have no rights to inject themselves into our internal affairs. They are welcome to join our diminishing liberal left-wingers here after they choose to leave their lands and join us but under no circumstances before.
Israeli leaders coddle them because these mostly millionaire and billionaire foreigners support even maintain our corrupted leaders in grand style at home and abroad. BB travels 5 Star plus on their accounts and on their private Jets often and here is where this symbiotic relationship must cease and be brought under control.
Our politicians benefit personally from deep pockets of these false Jews but the reverse being no free lunches these same from time to time require and eve demand payback. Lost in this system of corruption is the good of the country of Israel and our people.
Comptroller set to probe PM’s financial issues
State comptroller secretly quizzed Netanyahu in ‘Bibi-Tours’ probe
Drucker alleged that Netanyahu had accepted funding from private businessmen for trips for himself and his family while in public office. He also said two different organizations had paid for the same trip – one the Netanyahus took to the United States in September 2006.
BB and most Israeli politicians are corrupt and corrupted by foreign Jewish and non Jewish interests including christian evangelicals (missionaries). Corruption is more dangerous to the state than any external physical threat. In most cases this form of threat is hidden from the public and supported by the other government institutions like the AG and the courts. Mainly because they are all dirty in some degree.
Reminder: I am ashamed of the American Jewish Committee
They are as “centrist” as Arctic Circle.
Liberal American Jews’ first priority is to make nice with Obama.
They can’t bothered to defend Israel cause they need to know which way the wind is blowing first.
F*ck ’em!