Robert Tait
The main settlers’ lobby has released a video ridiculing John Kerry’s Middle East peace efforts, undermining a plea from the White House for Israeli politicians to desist from personal attacks on the US secretary of state
Israel’s Yesha [settlers] Council has posted online a deliberately disrespectful spoof depicting America’s top diplomat – played by an actor resembling John Kerry – riding a camel and making a series of preposterous statements that belittle his understanding of the region’s complexities.
At one point, the Mr Kerry character is seen down-playing the importance of the Western Wall, one of the holiest sites in Judaism, in Jerusalem’s old city.
“Dividing Jerusalem is not an easy thing,” the actor says. “We must realise it is holy to all religions – Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Klingons and Hobbits. But what I’m saying is: ‘why fight over an old wall?’
I’ll build you a brand new wall, close to the beach.”
A woman with an American accent is then seen telling him: “I think you should go home, where you belong, and stay there.”
Dani Dayan, the Yesha Council’s international envoy, said the video aimed to “highlight the infeasibility of John Kerry’s proposals, which are at best unrealistic and at worst a danger to the State of Israel.”
It was released after several high-ranking Israeli politicians launched apparently coordinated attacks on Mr Kerry for warning at a security conference in Munich last weekend that the Jewish state faced the risk of an economic boycott if no peace deal was reached with the Palestinians.
Naftali Bennett, the industry minister and leader of the far-Right Jewish Home party, accused Mr Kerry of acting as a “mouthpiece for anti-Semitic boycott threats”.
In response, Susan Rice, the US national security adviser, issued a series of tweets on Tuesday denouncing the criticism.
“Personal attacks in Israel directed at Sec Kerry totally unfounded and unacceptable,” Ms Rice wrote in one tweet. Another said: “U.S. Govt has been clear and consistent that we reject efforts to boycott or delegitimize Israel.”
Earlier this month, Moshe Yaalon, a hawkish Israeli cabinet minister, triggered the diplomatic row by dismissing Kerry’s frenetic peacemaking efforts as meddling motivated by “an incomprehensible obsession and a sense of messianism”. “The only thing that might save us is if John Kerry wins the Nobel Prize and leaves us be,” he was reported to have said by an Israeli newspaper.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who had earlier labelled calls for a boycott “immoral and unjust”, told members of his Likud party on Monday that attacking Mr Kerry personally was wrong. “We are in the midst of a complex, sensitive and difficult process, and there may be misunderstandings down the line,” he said. “The way to clear up misunderstandings must be professional, to the point, and not about the person.”
