Netanyahu slams deputy minister’s digs at US Jewry

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday rapped his deputy foreign minister for “offensive” remarks in which she said US Jews were too “comfortable” to understand threats to Israel.
In an interview on Tel Aviv-based i24News TV channel, Tzipi Hotovely of Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party was quizzed Wednesday on the growing gulf between Israel and US Jewry, particularly youth. “Maybe they’re too young to remember how it feels to be a Jewish person without a Jewish homeland, without a Jewish state,” she said in English, adding that US Jewry “never send their children to fight for their country”.
“Most of the Jews don’t have children serving as soldiers, going to the marines, going to Afghanistan or to Iraq,” she said. “Most of them are having quite a convenient life, they don’t feel how it feels to be attacked by rockets.”
US-educated Netanyahu, who is also foreign minister, described his deputy’s comments as offensive. “There is no place for such attacks, and her remarks do not reflect the position of the State of Israel,” an English-language government statement quoted him as saying.