Juan Cole: Now Peace Talks, John Kerry, are ‘Anti-Semitic’ in Eyes of Israeli Far Right

This post originally ran on Juan Cole’s Web page.

The Likud-led Israeli government doesn’t like US Secretary of State John Kerry at all. Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon ridiculed him as “obsessive” and “messianic.” Economy Minister Naftali Bennett earlier this week slammed Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as being under Kerry’s influence, when Netanyahu was said to be considering leaving Israeli squatters on Palestinian land under the authority of the Palestine government in a peace deal leading to Israel relinquishing its current annexation project.

Last week the largest Danish bank divested from Israel’s HaPoalim Bank because the latter funds squatter firms on Palestinian territory, in contravention of international law. This step is the latest in a rash of European moves to divest from Israeli economic enterprises located on Palestinian land in the West Bank and illegally exploiting Palestinian resources. (The 1949 Geneva Convention forbids an Occupying power from flooding its citizens into militarily occupied territory or from altering the lifeways of its people. Also just stealing their stuff is frowned on.) European firms complicit in West Bank Israeli crimes are increasingly exposed to legal action in European courts. Kerry is apparently acting on behalf of some section of American Jewry that is more clear-eyed than rightwing Israelis and sees this writing on the wall, and is trying to save Israel from Apartheid isolation with some version of a two-state solution.

Naftali Bennett is from the small religious Jewish Home Party that is in coalition with the largely secular Netanyahu government. Jewish Home is dead set against returning to pre-1967 borders or allowing the emergence of a Palestinian state, and has been threatening to withdraw from the government if Netanyahu signs a Kerry-brokered peace treaty with the Palestinians.

Now Israeli parliament member Motti Yogev, also from the Jewish Home Party, has attacked Kerry, this time as bigotted against Jews. He said, “Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is acting under Kerry’s obsessive pressure, which may have anti-Semitic undertones . . . 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.” .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/now_peace_talks_john_kerry_are_anti-semitic_israeli_far_right_20140203