We just got this picture of Yariv Oppenheimer, the head of Peace Now in Israel, in green at left, hanging at a party with men who are said to be members of the Yesha Council, the settlers’ group. The guy to the right of Oppenheimer is said to be Danny Dayan, who has said, “a withdrawal from the territories of Judea and Samaria in the hope that a sympathetic president will rule is a suicidal delusion.”
Ofer N. found the picture on Facebook (at a farewell party for the outgoing Galei Tzahal radio reporter Guy Varon) and sent it to me… Ofer says that in the background (left) you can see Itamar Ben Gvir, of the Jewish National Front, a Kahanist party.
I don’t live in Israel, I find it hard to understand that society. I do know that it’s hard for Israelis to support, for instance, boycott of the settlements if they have friends and relatives living there…
A week or so back Uri Avnery blasted Oppenheimer for meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.
[H]ow did it enter the minds of these “Senior Peace Now Members” to meet this man of all people, and thus bestow legitimacy on him?
[B]ehind Ayalon there looms the man who appointed him: the minister for foreign affairs, Avigdor Lieberman. Lieberman is an international symbol of racism, a settler and defender of settlers, the principal assistant in Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to obstruct peace and eternalize the occupation. …
Dozens of foreign ministers refuse to meet with Lieberman. No Arab leader agrees to shake his hand. Egyptians loathe him; for Palestinians he is the symbol of evil. He cannot show his face in respectable international society. So, for heaven’s sake, what caused the “Senior Peace Now Members” to legitimize this person?
UPDATE: Oppenheimer has responded on facebook, writing a comment there (per Ofer) stating he never socializes with people like Ben Gvir, but people like Dayan are different, because they do not support pogroms against Palestinians, so Dayan is only an “ideological adversary.”
