Israel Matzav

Gaffe? You call that a gaffe?

Google defines a gaffe as "an unintentional act or remark causing embarrassment to its originator; a blunder." Hold that definition for a minute - you'll see why. 

In Tuesday's Boston Herald, Adriana Cohen refers to John Kerry's statement that Israel risks becoming an 'apartheid state' as a gaffe.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry has stepped in it again — with a gaffe that this time not only makes him look foolish but makes a mess of U.S. foreign policy and destroys any chance he had of realizing his legacy pipe dream of brokering Middle East peace.

In a private meeting with senior international officials Friday, Kerry said that if the Israelis and Palestinians can’t achieve a two-state solution, Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state with second-class citizens.”

Israelis are aghast — especially with Kerry’s remarks being reported yesterday on Holocaust Remembrance Day — and have started issuing calls for his resignation. Foreign policy experts are stunned, saying Kerry’s racially charged statements are major setbacks to peace negotiations in the Middle East.

“No wonder our diplomacy in the Middle East is so wretched,” former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton told the Herald, calling Kerry’s remarks “outrageous and defamatory.”

But for it to be a gaffe, Kerry would have to be embarrassed about it. There's no sign of that.

"I will not allow my commitment to Israel to be questioned by anyone, particularly for partisan, political purposes," Kerry said in the statement, issued by the State Department. "I do not believe, nor have I ever stated, publicly or privately, that Israel is an apartheid state or that it intends to become one."

"I have been around long enough to also know the power of words to create a misimpression, even when unintentional, and if I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word," Kerry added.

No apologies there. Caroline Glick writes that there are no apologies because Kerry is an anti-Semite. 

John Kerry’s recent use of the term “Apartheid” in reference to Israel’s future was an anti-Semitic act.

...

By ignoring the fact that every Palestinian leader views Jews as a contaminant that must be blotted out from the territory the Palestinians seek to control, (before they will even agree to accept sovereign responsibility for it), while attributing to Jews malicious intent towards the Palestinians that no Israeli Jewish politician with a chance of leading the country harbors, Kerry is adopting a full-throated and comprehensive anti-Semitic position.

It is both untethered from reason and libelous of Jews.

Speaking to the Daily Beast about Kerry’s remarks on Sunday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki was quick to use the “some of his best friends are Jewish,” defense.

In her words, “Secretary Kerry, like Justice Minister [Tzipi] Livni, and previous Israeli Prime Ministers [Ehud] Olmert and [Ehud] Barak, was reiterating why there’s no such thing as a one-state solution if you believe, as he does, in the principle of a Jewish state. He was talking about the kind of future Israel wants.”

So in order to justify his own anti-Semitism – and sell it to the American Jewish community – Kerry is engaging in vulgar partisan interference in the internal politics of another country.

Indeed, Kerry went so far as to hint that if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is forced from power, and Kerry’s Jewish best friends replace him, then things will be wonderful.  In his words, if “there is a change of government or a change of heart, something will happen.” By inserting himself directly into the Israeli political arena, Kerry is working from his mediator Martin Indyk’s playbook.

 Read the whole thing.

Labels: anti-Semitism, Israeli apartheid, John Kerry, Middle East peace process

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:52 PM