Prime Minister Netanyahu had issued a video calling the PA 's demand for all Jews in the territories to be repatriated to Israel as “ethnic cleansing” and demanding a “judenrein” state. He said that peace means acceptance and integration, and pointed to the one quarter of Israel’s citizens who were Arabs and were integrated in the State.
Although it would seem that Netanyahu’s words were just common sense, hours after the video was released the State Department issued its usual knee-flex condemnation that his words were “inappropriate and unhelpful.”
A refreshingly different kind of response came from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s adviser on U.S.-Israeli relations, real estate lawyer and bankruptcy expert David M. Friedman of the Kasowitz law firm, who blasted the Obama administration for its reaction.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu makes exactly the right point. The Palestinians want Israel to absorb countless 'refugees' — people who never lived in Israel and whose ancestors were never forced to leave Israel — while their so-called 'state' is required to be, as the Nazis said, judenrein (clean of Jews). It is an entirely racist and anti-Semitic position,” Friedman told Ha’aretz in an email exchange.
“Arabs live and work side by side with Israelis in the State of Israel. They attend universities, enjoy the strongest human and civil rights (including women's rights) in the region, and have access to world class health care. There is no better place for Arabs to live in the Middle East than in the State of Israel. The Prime Minister of Israel correctly observes that the Palestinian demand to remove all Jews from their ancestral homeland in Judea and Samaria is nothing short of an attempt at ethnic cleansing. The State Department should be ashamed of their misguided reaction to Mr. Netanyahu's remarks,” he added.
“The United States frequently refers to the ‘two state solution’ as two states for two peoples. The Palestinian response — which the U.S. State Department refuses to challenge — is ‘one state for two peoples (Israel) and a second state just for Palestinian Arabs.’ It is no wonder that the State Department under Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have lost credibility in the region,” Friedman concuded.
