Netanyahu bashes deputy FM for saying US Jews have it easy
Despite criticism, Tzipi Hotovely doubles down on statement American Jews lead ‘convenient’ lives, can’t understand Israelis because they don’t serve in the military
Stuart Winer is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday issued a rare public rebuke of Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely for comments in which she claimed US Jews struggle to understand the Middle East because they lead comfortable lives and don’t perform military service.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemns Tzipi Hotovely’s offensive remarks regarding the American Jewish community,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said.
“The Jews of the Diaspora are dear to us and are an inseparable part of our people. There is no place for such attacks, and her remarks do not reflect the position of the State of Israel,” added the statement from Netanyahu, who also serves as foreign minister.
Appearing Wednesday on i24, an Israel-based English-language news channel, Hotovely addressed rising tensions between Israel and US Jewry, including over restrictions on non-Orthodox prayer at the Western Wall and over the Israeli government’s policies on the Palestinians.
During the interview, Hotovely depicted US Jews as being removed from the sacrifices other Americans make, as well as the threats that govern life in Israel.
“The other issue is not understanding the complexity of the region,” she said. “People that never send their children to fight for their country — most of the Jews don’t have children serving as soldiers, going to the Marines, going to Afghanistan, or to Iraq. Most of them are having quite convenient lives. They don’t feel how it feels to be attacked by rockets, and I think part of it is to actually experience what Israel is dealing with on a daily basis.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely on i24NEWS' `The Rundown' discusses the growing gap between the Jewish State and American Jews, describing them as “people that never send their children to fight for their country, most of the Jews don’t have children serving as soldiers, going to the Marines, going to Afghanistan, going to Iraq… Most of them are having quite convenient lives,” the Likud lawmaker suggested, adding that “They don’t feel how it feels to be attacked by rockets”; with Calev Ben-David & Nurit Ben
Posted by Calev Ben-David on Wednesday, November 22, 2017
Opposition criticism was swift.
“Tzipi Hotovely’s comments about American Jewry are a combination of ignorance and arrogance. This government has to stop trying to divide the Jewish people, both in Israel and abroad,” Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid said in a statement Thursday.
Avi Gabbay, leader of the opposition Zionist Union faction, also blasted Hotovely, while pointing out that rather than serve in the military, she had done a stint of national service in the US. Hotovely’s comments were “shameful and embarrassing,” he said in a statement that referred to her sarcastically as “the great warrior, the moral sermonizer who spent her military service in Atlanta.
“While Netanyahu has already found the time to condemn her comments, make no mistake – she’s accurately expressing the policy of a government that has decided to sacrifice [Israel’s] relationship with US Jews for petty political gain,” Gabbay said.
MK Nachman Shai of the Zionist Union, who chairs the caucus on Israel-US ties in the Knesset, called on Netanyahu to suspend Hotovely.
“The Jews of the US were here before her and they will be here when she’s gone,” he said in a statement. “They don’t need lessons from her — not on love for Israel and not on ‘who is a Jew.’ Their support for Israel is unimpeachable, and they are one of our most valuable assets.”
Responding to the rising backlash over Hotovely’s comments, her spokesperson issued a statement Thursday saying the deputy foreign minister maintained her comments were justified, while claiming that her views were taken out of context and that she had stressed to the TV channel the great importance of American Jewry to Israel.
The statement said that Hotovely had spoken to i24 news of “the complications of life in Israel under the persistent threat of terror and rockets aimed at the civilian population. People who don’t have the daily reality of Israel have great difficulty understanding the situation in the Middle East.”
“That is a basis for the distance between Jewry in the US and in Israel,” the statement continued. “Although only part of the full interview was circulated, it is important to say that most of the interview spoke about the importance that Deputy Minister Hotovely assigns to ties between us and US Jews, and that Israel is the home of all the Jews in the world. It is a shame that that part was dropped from the piece that was published on the internet. Deputy Minister Hotovely affirms that US Jews make a large contribution, but you can’t condition the relationship with Israel on the government’s policies.”
Speaking to Army Radio, Hotovely doubled down on her opinion that US Jews are far removed from the experience of having family members on the front lines of a conflict.
“They don’t have children who are soldiers,” she said. “Israel and the US are countries that have very different daily lives.”
The US military stopped recording the religion of recruits decades ago, but until then Jews served in slightly greater proportion than their percentage in the general population.
JTA contributed to this report.
