Israeli lawmakers are slamming Secretary of State John Kerry for suggesting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has contributed to the growth of the Islamic State group. A State Department spokeswoman, however, disputed the politicians’ understanding of Kerry’s words.
Naftali Bennett, Israel’s economy minister, suggested in a post on Facebook that Kerry was promoting anti-Semitic slander.
“Even when a British Muslim beheads a British Christian, there will always be those who blame the Jews,” Bennett wrote.
The controversy was sparked Thursday when Kerry spoke at a ceremony at the State Department in honor of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha during which he referenced the reasons behind the recruitment of Muslim youths to the rebel group aiming to depose the Syrian and Iraqi governments and establish a caliphate.
“As I went around and met with people in the course of our discussions about the ISIL [Islamic State] coalition, the truth is we – there wasn’t a leader I met with in the region who didn’t raise with me spontaneously the need to try to get peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause of recruitment and of street anger and agitation that they felt – and I see a lot of heads nodding – they had to respond to,” Kerry said. “And people need to understand the connection of that. And it has something to do with humiliation and denial and absence of dignity, and Eid [the holiday] celebrates the opposite of all of that.”
Member of Israeli Knesset Ayelet Shaked of the right-wing Jewish Home party told Israel’s Army Radio Sunday morning, “To tie the Islamic State with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is something that shows a lack of understanding about what’s happening in the Middle East. It not right that every conflict and every bloodshed should be tied to the State of Israel.”
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