U.S. Ambassador’s Comments Ignite Diplomatic Row With Israel

[Purveyor]

Source: Washington Post

By William Booth January 19 at 12:40 PM

JERUSALEM — Israeli leaders on Tuesday sharply criticized U.S. Ambassador Daniel Shapiro’s observation that the law in the occupied West Bank is applied differently to Palestinians and Israelis, calling it “unacceptable” and demanding a retraction.

Shapiro’s comments would strike many as a statement of fact: Palestinians in the West Bank live under military occupation, face Israeli military tribunals and can be held for months, even years, without charges; the Jewish settlers in the territory, however, are subject to Israeli civilian courts.

But the plainly critical remarks by the U.S. diplomat in a speech at a security think tank Monday angered Israel’s top leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called them “unacceptable and wrong.”

The diplomatic skirmish comes as Israel finds itself facing renewed criticism from the European Union for the continued expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a complaint that Shapiro echoed in his remarks.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/us-ambassadors-comments-ignite-diplomatic-row-with-israel/2016/01/19/2fcca4b6-beb2-11e5-98c8-7fab78677d51_story.html

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Former Netanyahu Aide Calls U.S. Ambassador to Israel 'Jew Boy'

Allison Kaplan Sommer Jan 19, 2016 6:18 PM

A former advisor of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the derogatory Hebrew term “Yehudon” - loosely translated as “little Jew boy” to characterize remarks by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro .

On a Tuesday morning political panel show, on Israel’s Channel 2, commentator Aviv Bushinsky reacted to remarks Shapiro made in his speech to the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) conference. Shapiro said "too much Israeli vigilantism in the West Bank goes on unchecked," adding that "there is a lack of thorough investigations… at times it seems Israel has two standards of adherence to rule of law in the West Bank - one for Israelis and one for Palestinians."

After viewing a clip of Shapiro’s remarks, Bushinsky declared, “To put it bluntly, it was a statement typical of a little Jew boy (Yehudon).” 

When his fellow panelists protested that Shapiro was merely expressing the position of the United States, Bushinsky responded, “Nobody was standing there with a hammer forcing him to say it. He’s his own person … I see a Jew, Dan Shapiro, saying this. I see it as a pattern - it was the same thing with [former U.S. Middle East Envoy] Dennis Ross and now with [former U.S. Ambassador to Israel] Martin Indyk saying his nonsense. It's the behavior of Jews who are trying to show that they are extra left-wing, more liberal and more balanced."

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[Katashi_itto]

1. Meh, we do the same here with whites vs the treatment of ethnic groups.

[meow2u3]

2. Amb. Shapiro is 100% correct

Netanyahu simply cannot handle the truth if God himself called him out on his genocidal racism.

[2banon]

3. The blind denial is so beyond pathetic.. n/t

[Ghost Dog]

4. Rightist Israel is becoming a pariah apartheid State,

unfortunately, to most otherwise impartial international eyes.

Live with it? Or think not?

[Mosby]

5. The West Bank is not Israel

Apartheid has to occur in the country right?

Or is the definition different for Israelis?

[Ghost Dog]

8. The Israeli State illegally occupies

the illegally occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank and imposes apartheid and worse conditions there.

That is unintelligent policy to which relatively civilised international players seem to feel they need to respond appropiately.

This is what I observe and on which I comment.

[Mosby]

11. The occupation is legal.

It's not a disputed fact.

[Ghost Dog]

12. You are not serious

Have a good night.

[Mosby]

13. Thanks, but I'm watching the suns.

They are already losing by 10 at the start of the second quarter.

You might find this info interesting, or not.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_II_Accord

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank

The key point here is that the situation is dictated by signed agreements between the two parties, moreover oslo 2 put the vast majority of palestinians in the WB under complete PA control.

[Odin2005]

21. Illegal under international law.

Not like Fascist scum like Bibi care...

[Mosby]

22. No it isn't

[JackRiddler]

14. South Africa also set up "independent states"

known as Bantustans.

Palestinian territories are not recognized as Israel but they are de facto under a crushing Israeli domination.

But this is obvious, and yet you will pretend it flew over your head and somehow describes another planet. Such a waste of time, here.

[Mosby]

15. Bantustans were set up inside the borders of SA

The WB is outside of Israel.

There are legitimate disagreements about the occupation, the path of the security fence, the Israeli only roads, the settlements and the coordination between the PA and the Israeli authorities, but none of that creates apartheid, but as we see from this thread and many others, the Big Lie technique is still very effective. Just look at what happened to jimmy Carter 're apartheid in Israel.

I know that Israel is a wonderful democracy with equal treatment of all it's citizens whether arab or jew.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/carters-rhetoric-of-apartheid/

[JackRiddler]

26. You proud of Carter's head on a platter, are you?

You're right, it's not apartheid. I don't recall that South Africa ever spent a month bombing a densely populated, enclosed refugee prison full of children. It's worse, and in this country - the one that just gives a few billion in tax dollars to Israel every year - your legalistic hair-splitting trying to disguise an order based on religious colonialism, racism and violence plays only to a very narrow support base of pro-Israel and Republican-Christian-endtimes fanatics. You live in a bubble. Good day to you sir.

[gregcrawford]

6. The truth hurts, don't it, bitches?

As long as a self-serving sociopath like Bibi is calling the shots, nothing's going to change, or improve, for Palestinians. Israelis are going to have to come to terms with the fact that it was the Palestinians' country for more than a thousand years, before the Brits played both ends against the middle after WW II and started all this shit in the futile hope that they could once again claim that the Sun never set on the British Empire. Their diseased foreign policies of a hundred years ago still reverberate in the Middle East, goddamn them to hell. For the record I was born a British subject, so yeah, I CAN call them out for their perfidy. The problems in Israel would not exist if it weren't for British arrogance and hegemony.

Okay, now you can clutch your pearls.

[Mosby]

10. There were no Palestinians a thousand years ago

Or 500 years ago, or 200 years ago.

What there is though are Jews who have been living continuously in their homeland for several thousand years.

[markj757]

16. What bullshit.....

I think that's one of the most disgusting arguments you can make in defense of Israel's oppression of the Palestinians. There were no Americans 500 years ago, so what the hell does that mean? Does that mean we don't have a right to exist free from oppression, if we were overpowered by another nation. Would we not have the human right to live in dignity and freedom because there were no such thing as Americans 500 years ago?

[Mosby]

17. I was correcting a misperception

Palestinian nationalism has been around for about 100 years, and there has never been a country called Palestine.

Prior to the influx of Jews in the early 1900s most Palestinians thought of themselves as Syrians and Egyptians.

[brentspeak]

27. Irrelevant if they called themselves "Palestinians" before or after

They are a people who had been living in that particular region (Palestine) for 1000 years. What they call themselves today is completely irrelevant. The Jews conquered their territory, ethnically cleansed most of them out, then kept most of them out -- while appropriating their personal land and property. Corrupt and incompetent Palestinian leadership -- and even more corrupt and incompetent surrounding Arab leadership -- could not compete against the vastly better organized and clever Israeli military and political leadership. So now the Palestinians are stuck where they are now: caught between Islamic fundamentalists (Hamas) and Israel.

[Nihil]

19. There were no Israelis a thousand years ago either

Or 500 years ago, or 200 years ago, or 70 years ago.

What there is though are Egyptians, Arabs, Persians, Jews, Turks and many more besides
who have been living continuously in that region for several thousand years.

And, of course, lots of Egyptians, Arabs, Persians, Jews, Turks and many more besides
who have been living outside that region for several thousand years.

So, what was your point again?

[Mosby]

23. maybe you should study some history

Jewish Israelis are descended from the B'nei Yisrael (Israelites) and in the bible Jews are often referred to as the "sons/children of Israel". Even today in modern Hebrew Jews are often referred to as the B'nei Yisrael.

Judaism in more than a religion, it's a tribe or as sociologists call an ethno-religious tradition. Unlike all the other groups you mention only Jews have been living in Israel, Judea and Samaria for thousands of years.

I mention all this not because it's some kind of contest to see who has been living in Israel the longest, but to dispel this false notion that Palestinians were living there for a very long time and then after the Holocaust the Jews came and stole their land. None of that is true, and it's actually very offensive to many Jews.

[mahina]

7. The Prime Minister directly addressing Congress to lobby against our own President? No problem.

Go f

Ly a kite, Bushinsky. Funny, Bushinsky means little Bush in Yinglish.

You guys have one friend.

[prouddemfromaustin44]

18. Israel has gotten extremely aggressive over the past few years

And yet, we continue to give them massive amounts of aid. Very unfortunate..

[Odin2005]

20. The Israeli Fascists are disgusting.

[geek tragedy]

24. Lol, Israel, big talk for a country in the process of destroying itself nt

[BillZBubb]

25. Is it weird for an Israeli to use a derogatory term that sounds anti-Semitic?

To an outsider like me, calling someone a "little Jew boy" reeks of anti Semitism. I couldn't see myself ever using that phrase. What's up with that? Has the Israeli right gone totally loony?