"Netanyahu does NOT speak for me"! (World)

Sheldon S., Ashley Wells. CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Aaron Schachter (PRI's The World)

Demonstrator holds sign during rally near Israeli Consulate in NY to protest Israeli PM Netanyahu's speech in front of U.S. Congress (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters/pri.org).

 

Mitt, you tell that Obama... - I'll tell him, Bibi!

"If you put five Jews in a room," the old joke goes, "you get six opinions." So it's no shock that Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress has strongly divided opinions among Jews living in the United States.
 

"There is a division," says Alan Lowenthal, a Democratic congressman from California. "I think that it's unfortunate that all of us who were one time on the same page were forced to make choices."

 

U.S./Israel has bases all around Iran.

More than 50 Democratic members of Congress, including six Jews, skipped Netanyahu's speech on Tuesday. Lowenthal says he wrestled with the decision and decided to attend, but he's angry that the speech has pitted Democrat against Republican, Jew against Jew. 

 
"The support for Israel, historically, has been a bipartisan effort," he says. "I think that two weeks before the Israeli elections...it's an inappropriate time to both influence the United States Congress, and for the United States Congress to be involved in an election in Israel. I think that's totally inappropriate."

 

US: build nuclear, burn oil

Many liberal American Jews agree with Lowenthal. "We published an ad in the New York Times that was signed by 2650 people. It says, 'No, Mr. Netanyahu, you do not represent American Jews,'" says Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine, a progressive Jewish quarterly.

 

Lerner is not a fan of Netanyahu in the best of times, and hasn't been for decades. But he says his criticism has mostly been about Netanyahu's policies, not his behavior. This time, though, he says Netanyahu has gone too far. More

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(PRI.org with backing from BBC.com)

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