Wow, Benjamin Netanyahu is really on a roll. First, his dad spills the beans on his true intentions for the peace process, then he gets quoted calling Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod “self-hating Jews,” and now this from Reuters:
Hosting the German foreign minister this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used an especially tainted term to condemn the Palestinian demand that Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank be removed.
“Judea and Samaria cannot be Judenrein,” a Netanyahu confidant quoted him as telling Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Asked how Germany’s top diplomat responded to hearing the Nazi Holocaust term for areas “cleansed of Jews,” the confidant said, “What could he do? He basically just nodded.”
Protocol might have indicated that a representative of the country that carried out the World War Two genocide, and which has since made much effort to atone, be spared such invocations.
But these are not normal times for the right-wing Netanyahu coalition.
Um, so who are the Nazis here? The Palestinians who want the West Bank as part of their state (which Jews are welcome to stay in with equal rights)? Or the international community who might be pressing Israel to leave the occupied territories?
While it would be nice to consider this an unfortunate slip of the tongue, Reuters reports that it’s actually the Netanyahu government’s new communications strategy! The report adds that “some diplomats have quietly questioned the propriety of applying such comparisons,” while “German officials made no comment on the terminology.” Israeli hasbara isn’t what it used to be.
