Ya’alon: I wasn’t snubbed, US officials were busy
At ceremony opening Lod plant to build wings for US F-35 fighters, DM denies he got cold shoulder from Biden, Kerry et al in DC
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Tuesday that the Obama administration did not deliberately snub him or deny his requests to meet with US officials during a late October visit to Washington, but that the US politicians were busy preparing for midterm elections.
“I did not feel a cold shoulder when I was in Washington,” Ya’alon said. “Some of the people could not see me since I came at an inconvenient time and they were not in town.”
Ya’alon added that although a number of planned meetings did not take place, he had nevertheless achieved his goals during the five day visit, as he had still managed to hold talks with several key US officials.
These included US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.
“Even if I did not meet with all the parties I had set out to, because most of them were engaged in the midterm elections, those who it was important for me to meet, such as Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, I met,” he said.
Ya’alon made the remarks at a ceremony marking the opening of a joint Israel Aerospace Industries and Lockheed Martin plant for producing wings for the F-35 joint strike fighter in Lod. US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro also attended the ribbon cutting ceremony, and said it was a “great symbol of the stellar US-Israel security partnership, and the partnership between our leading defense companies.”
(Photos) @AmbShapiro today at the inauguration of the F-35 wing assembly line at Israel Aircraft Industries. pic.twitter.com/vGYsLRzEft
— USEmbassyJerusalem (@usembassyjlm) November 4, 2014
Two weeks ago, however, and contrary to Ya’alon’s claims, US officials stated that the defense minister’s request to meet with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Adviser Susan Rice was denied by the Obama administration, since the US leadership was still looking to settle scores with Ya’alon for statements he made in January in which he called Kerry “obsessive” and “messianic” about Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which came to an abrupt halt in April. The officials added that the administration was also still miffed by the fact that Ya’alon had privately derided Kerry’s security proposals for an Israeli pullout from the West Bank, and had earlier this year infuriated officials in Washington with comments accusing the government of being weak on Iran.
According to the officials, the administration had also sought to stop Ya’alon from seeing Power but the objections were made too late to cancel the meeting.
The already faltering ties between the Obama administration and the Israeli government seemed last week to have sunk to a new low, after an anonymous US official was quoted calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “chickenshit” in an article published by journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in the American magazine The Atlantic. The article portrayed the rift between the United States and Israel as a “full-blown crisis.”
Kerry on Friday phoned Netanyahu, and apologized to him in the name of the Obama administration for the comments made by the anonymous official. American officials were quoted Friday night as saying that the Kerry-Netanyahu phone call was a “good conversation” and that the two had discussed ways to improve relations between the US and Israeli leaderships.
Nonetheless, analysts on both of Israel’s main news shows Friday night, on Channels 2 and 10, said ties between the American and Israeli leaderships were extremely bad — with a Channel 10 commentator speaking of “unprecedented loathing” between the two administrations.
Netanyahu, on his part, rejected the criticism leveled against him by the unnamed official, saying in the Knesset plenum that he was personally attacked purely because he defended Israel.
He added that despite all the attacks against him, he would continue to defend the country and the citizens of Israel.
Lazar Berman, Adiv Sterman and AFP contributed to this report.
