After Obama said Israel ‘took land off people,’ Netanyahu fires back: ‘This is our homeland, we will not gamble with our survival’

Responding to a statement earlier this week by former US president Barack Obama that said Israel “took land off people” in its founding, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stresses that Jews are “in the land of our forefathers” and are not the obstacle to peace.

“The Jewish people are not foreign occupiers in the land of our forefathers,” says Netanyahu in an English-language video.

“Our history is not a colonial enterprise,” he continues. “Our land is not stolen land.”

“This is our homeland,” says Netanyahu. “It’s called Judea. That’s where Jews come from. We’ve been attached to it for thousands of years.”

In Northern Ireland on Tuesday to receive an honorary doctorate from Queen’s University Belfast, Obama said that the Israelis “took land off people and they were excessive. And those people understandably said: ‘This is injustice and I want my land back.'”

He continued: “If the attitude of Israel is now that we are the strongest, the most technologically advanced in the region, then our security will depend on us simply doing whatever we need and taking whatever we want, and not making any concessions to anyone.”

“That may work short-term…” said Obama, “but you have ceded moral ground if that is the position you take.”

He said that Netanyahu’s government has taken that position, and that “it is incumbent on them to recognize that 7 million Palestinians are not going anywhere.”

Firing back, Netanyahu says: “The obstacle to peace is not Israel, it’s not our fight for our very right to exist in our own state…it’s the refusal of our enemies and America’s enemies to recognize the Jewish people’s right to a state of our own in any boundary.”

Netanyahu argues that “a peace built on illusions will crash against the rocks of Middle Eastern reality.”

Israel, says Netanyahu, “will not gamble with its survival to accommodate those who refuse to accept the facts of history, to accept our right to exist, or wish to appease terror. “