Democratic Union MK Tamar Zandberg and Joint List MK Ofer Cassif insist Netanyahu demand an apology.
By GIL HOFFMAN, JEREMY SHARONTamar Zandberg(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Politicians on the Left attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday for refusing to condemn US President Donald Trump’s comments that Jews who vote for the Democratic Party show “great disloyalty.”The Likud declined to respond to Trump, saying that “it is not a campaign issue.” One senior Likud figure said “the last thing we want to do is interfere in American politics, other than to say is we are friends with both parties.”Politicians on the Left called that unacceptable.“The only thing more disgusting than what Trump said is the hypocritical silence of Bibi,” said Joint List leader Ayman Odeh.Former MK Stav Shaffir said that as the co-leader of the Democratic Union, she wanted to defend her party’s American counterpart. She warned that Democrats were under attack all around the world, and that Netanyahu has taken a leading role in what she called “an international trend of irresponsible leaders daring to trample human rights, women, minorities and all issues that our grandparents advanced for decades to make the world a better place.”Her Democratic Union colleague, MK Tamar Zandberg, accused Trump of using a classic antisemitic stereotype, and both pointed out that the prime minister of the Jewish state should denounce such comments.“Casting doubt on the loyalties of minorities has been directed against the Jewish people for generations, and today unites the anti-liberal alliance of Netanyahu, Trump and other leaders,” said Zandberg. “Netanyahu should have been the first to demand an apology; on the other hand, he was the first to say that the Left has forgotten to be Jewish,” she said.Jabbing Netanyahu, who once warned that Israeli-Arab citizens were “flocking to the voting booths in droves,” Zandberg sarcastically proposed that the prime minister suggest to Trump that he warn Americans that “the Jews are flocking to the voting ballots.”Joint List MK Ofer Cassif asserted that since Trump had cast aspersions on the loyalty of Jews voting for the Democratic Party, for whom the large majority of Jewish Americans vote, the US president was essentially accusing “the majority of Jewish Americans” of being disloyal.“In a normal world, a president who spoke like that about the Jews of his country would receive severe condemnation from the prime minister of Israel, but not in the case of Netanyahu,” said Cassif, whose hard-left Hadash Party is a constituent of the Joint List of Arab parties. “While Trump is inciting antisemitism, when his supporters are implementing the racist manual of their leader, Netanyahu is silent.”
