Mayor @deblasioNYC presenting #Israel‘s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman with his very own “Big Apple” pic.twitter.com/E8X5EKcfmS
— Israel in New York (@IsraelinNewYork) April 4, 2014
When not being feted by the New York’s ostensibly liberal mayor, Avigdor Lieberman also found time to address Russian Jews in Brooklyn where he said Israel may soon have a “Russian-speaking prime minister”:
“Only in Israel could the likes of MK Yuli Edelstein or Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky rise to their positions,” Lieberman said to a crowd at a synagogue in Brighton Beach, the heart of the Russian immigrant enclave in southern Brooklyn, which is also known as “Little Odessa.” “Only in Israel, can a young Russian immigrant arrive and in 20 years become foreign minister. Soon we may have a Russian-speaking prime minister,” he added. Hosted by the Russian American Jewish Experience, the American Forum of Russian Jewry, the Council of Jewish Emigre Community Organizations, the Russian American Foundation and the World Zionist Organization, the event was open to the public and held at the Jewish Center of Brighton Beach, which serves as both an Orthodox synagogue and community center. As the audience waited for the speaker to arrive, local Russian community leaders introduced Lieberman with long flowery speeches, describing him as a fearless leader of Israel – where “rockets continue to fall and kill innocent civilians” – and invoking such historical events as the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms and Israel’s wars. Lieberman, as one would expect, was received quite well – somewhat like a celebrity returning to his hometown – in this modest synagogue with its scratched wooden pews and fading carpet. His audience ranged from teenagers to war veterans, with faces and accents originating everywhere from Lvov to Tashkent to St. Petersburg, Tblisi and Simferopol. The minister arrived after a speaking engagement in Manhattan, and seemed to breathe easier when speaking in Russian: “After all the presentations, in New York and later in Washington, the best is always here in Brooklyn, in Brighton Beach, with one’s own landsmen. The knowledge of your support, regardless of the ocean between us, is so dear to us in Israel.”
Mayor @deblasioNYC just met with FM Avigdor Lieberman during his NY visit http://t.co/QsbFktggko #Israel #NYC
— Israel in New York (@IsraelinNewYork) April 4, 2014
The meeting was of course closed to the press.
“Only in Israel could the likes of MK Yuli Edelstein or Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky rise to their positions,”
They’d be in prison anywhere else.
Sharansky is such an asshole. Spent years moaning about Soviet imprisonment but ignores the Palestinians in Israel’s jails.
Entitlement.
Someone should have asked him when he thought Israel could get an Arabic-speaking PM(who had Arabic as his or her mother tongue) in addition to a Russian-speaking one.
I would have paid a small sum to see his face.
They are both so sweet! Cuddly!
Oh, dear, but Krauss has expressed a complementary POV. Yes, it would be wonderful to see all their sun-shiny faces if an Arabic-speaking PM of Israel (or president of USA, for that matter) were to emerge. In Israel, such a speaker might well be an older Sephardi! I’ve always been partial to the idea of Jewish Arabs (in and out of Israel).
“New York’s ostensibly liberal mayor,”
DeBlasio is no liberal. A PEP, maybe, but that’s just another word for a hypocrite.
“Only in Israel could the likes of MK Yuli Edelstein or Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky rise to their positions,”
Isn’t this called the Peter Principle.