Bennett heckled at Tel Aviv think tank

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the Jewish Home party, kept up his new “unapologetic” campaign Thursday during an address before a prominent Tel Aviv-based think tank, charging that Israelis who do not believe in the land-for-peace formula musn’t apologize.

Bennett was heckled by audience members after mocking a “rite of passage” he says many nationalist Israeli politicians are urged to go through in which they “tell the press that they are ready to give up land to the Arabs.”

“The readiness to give up land to the enemy has become an entry card into the club of politicians seeking international legitimacy. It’s a simple process: blame Israel, apologize, say that we are occupiers, say that the process of transferring land is progressing too slowly — and voila! You’ll find yourself loved, appreciated, embraced at cocktail parties in European countries,” Bennett said at the Institute for Strategic Studies.

“All of a sudden you’re a ‘man of peace’ to people who never considered you that way. How wonderful,” he went on, at which point he was heckled by some in the audience. One heckler called him “a war criminal,” according to a Channel 2 clip.

“I will not be quiet, I am expressing a stance held by millions of Israelis, no one will silence us and I’ll keep saying [what I have to say] whether you like it or not,” he responded angrily. “We are no longer apologizing.”

Earlier this week, Bennett released a satirical video in which he is dressed as an aging hipster who repeatedly begs random Tel Avivians for forgiveness, though in each case it is clearly they who are in the wrong, not he. The bespectacled beardo can also be seen nodding his head in agreement as he reads an op-ed in the Haaretz daily titled “Israel should apologize.”

“From now on, we must stop apologizing,” Bennett urges viewers, shedding the disguise. The screen then blackens, and a message appears. “Stop apologizing, love Israel, become a member of the Jewish Home party,” it says.

At the INSS Thursday, Bennett said that he would never give up land for peace with the Palestinians and charged that the so-called Palestinian state was an invention.

“Who were its leaders, where was its territory? Inventions [to argue that] we occupied a Palestinian state,” he said.

“If there’s one thing the Palestinians have done over the years is prove that they do not deserve a state. With murder, terror and blood, you do not build a country. With rockets and terror tunnels… you do not build a country,” Bennett said

The Jewish Home leader asserted that should Israel state clearly and unapologetically that it will not agree “to commit [national] suicide by establishing a Palestinian state on Israeli land, the world will eventually understand.”

Overnight Wednesday, the Palestinians submitted a draft resolution to the UN Security Council setting a 12-month deadline to reach a final peace deal with Israel and the end of 2017 as the date for completing an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.