Obama: Netanyahu's anti-Arab remarks

Obama: Netanyahu's anti-Arab remarks likely to have foreign policy consequences

President says because U.S. is close to Israel, Oval Office had to speak up about Israeli PM's Election Day comments lest it lose credibility.

U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's anti-Arab remarks on Election Day has "foreign-policy consequences," The Atlantic reported on Thursday.

The U.S. president made it clear during the interview with the American periodical on Tuesday that Netanyahu's portrayal of Arab voters as "an invading force that might vote" is contrary to the very language of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which explicitly states that all people regardless of race or religion are full participants in the democracy."

"When something like that happens, that has foreign policy consequences, and precisely because we’re so close to Israel, for us to simply stand there and say nothing would have meant that this office, the Oval Office, lost credibility when it came to speaking out on these issues,” he said.

Obama remarked in the interview that despite the confrontations with Netanyahu over the past number of years, most of the American Jewish community still voted for him in the 2012 presidential election.

"What I also think is that there has been a very concerted effort on the part of some political forces to equate being pro-Israel, and hence being supportive of the Jewish people, with a rubber stamp on a particular set of policies coming out of the Israeli government," he said. "So if you are questioning settlement policy, that indicates you’re anti-Israeli, or that indicates you’re anti-Jewish. If you express compassion or empathy towards Palestinian youth, who are dealing with checkpoints or restrictions on their ability to travel, then you are suspect in terms of your support of Israel. If you are willing to get into public disagreements with the Israeli government, then the notion is that you are being anti-Israel, and by extension, anti-Jewish. I completely reject that."

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.657636