NEW YORK – The World Jewish Congress (WJC) has condemned Knesset Member Moti Yogev of the Bayit Yehudi Party for inappropriate and inflammatory comments he made about US Secretary of State John Kerry in a radio interview last week and later in a letter to US Ambassador Daniel Shapiro clarifying the radio remarks.
“Secretary Kerry has proved his friendship to Israel and the Jewish people, and his devotion to the US-Israel special relationship, many times over the past 30 years,” said WJC President Ronald S. Lauder. “Whether or not you agree with Kerry’s approach to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, these comments are baseless and inappropriate and such personal attacks should be off-limits. MK Rogev should apologize, which he emphatically did not do in his letter to Ambassador Shapiro.”
In an interview with Israel Radio last Thursday, Yogev said that “Kerry’s obsessive pressure” on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the peace talks “may have anti-Semitic undertones.” Yogev added: “Kerry is not here to reach a compromise. He wants to decrease the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel and create a Palestinian state.”
In his letter Sunday to Shapiro, Yogev denied that his criticisms of Kerry were personal, but wrote, “These negotiations don’t have a partner, neither for peace nor for security, and there is no demographic problem or apartheid, just American and European pressure seeking to bring our enemies to the dangerous 1967 lines and evict the Jewish people from its land.” Yogev further stated in the letter that Kerry “threatened boycotts and delegitimization” of Israel and that he cannot be a fair broker, according to an account of the letter published in the Jerusalem Post.
