{"id":102811,"date":"2023-03-28T17:05:19","date_gmt":"2023-03-28T15:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=102811"},"modified":"2023-03-22T09:32:45","modified_gmt":"2023-03-22T07:32:45","slug":"18-05-80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=102811","title":{"rendered":"Israeli Minister: American Intervention in Israeli Politics \u2018Crossing a Line\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Israeli Minister: American Intervention in Israeli Politics \u2018Crossing a Line\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

LIEL LEIBOVITZ<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Amichai Chikli seeks calm, says Washington isn\u2019t helping<\/strong><\/span>
\n.<\/h4>\n

\u2018The protests are an internal Israeli political issue, and any foreign ambassador commenting on this issue, but particularly an ambassador of a friendly nation like the United States, is crossing a line,\u2019 says Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai ChikliSHAHAR AZRAN\/GETTY IMAGES<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

As Israeli protesters, including senior army officers, blocked the offices of conservative think tank Kohelet with cement and barbed wire Thursday morning, and as throngs of others attempted to shut down Ben-Gurion airport in an effort to block Prime Minister Netanyahu from departing on a visit to Rome, Amichai Chikli, Israel\u2019s soft-spoken minister of diaspora affairs, spent the day trying to advocate restraint and reconciliation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n
\n

And the Biden administration, he said, wasn\u2019t helping.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a basic issue of acknowledging the sovereignty of a friendly nation,\u201d he said. He was referring to comments by Tom Nides, Washington\u2019s ambassador to Jerusalem, who, last month, took the nearly unprecedented step of commenting directly on internal Israeli politics.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

\u201cWe\u2019re telling the prime minister, as I tell my kids, pump the brakes,\u201d Nides said. \u201cSlow down, try to get a consensus, bring the parties together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

Even if you let the intense \u201cpatronizing tone of this statement\u201d slide, Chikli said, still ruffled by the ambassador\u2019s equivocation of speaking to Israel\u2019s leader as one would to one\u2019s children, the statement is deeply worrisome. \u201cThe protests aren\u2019t about foreign policy or diplomacy or anything like that,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re an internal Israeli political issue, and any foreign ambassador commenting on this issue, but particularly an ambassador of a friendly nation like the United States, is crossing a line.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

Asked if he could surmise what had motivated the ambassador\u2019s choice of words, Chikli didn\u2019t hesitate.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to miss the political directive guiding him,\u201d he said. Chikli cited Sen. Tom Cotton\u2019s speech in Congress earlier this week, which shed light on the revelations that the U.S. was funding some of the key left-wing NGOs instrumental in organizing the recent wave of protests. One example, reported<\/a> by Lee Smith at Tablet, was $15,000 paid by the State Department for the Movement for Quality Government, a longtime leader in anti-Netanyahu efforts, including the current round of demonstrations.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

When I asked Chikli what, precisely, he believed was the ambassador\u2019s political directive, he sighed.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

\u201cLook,\u201d he said, \u201cin the United States, you have something called the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which curbs the ability of foreign governments to fund domestic political organizations. We want the exact same thing in Israel. That\u2019s all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

Instead, Chikli lamented, Israelis are seeing an influx of American taxpayer dollars, backed by outward political support from senior administration officials, to help \u201csupport an agenda clearly identified with the far left.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

Which, Chikli said, was very bad news for Israel, and not just for reasons of political and diplomatic decorum.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

\u201cWe have a very sensitive and combustible situation right now,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople are hurt, people are angry, and our top priorities are to stabilize things and then to pursue the policies we were elected to enact. Blatant American intervention makes both of these aims very, very difficult.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Liel Leibovitz<\/strong> is editor at large for Tablet Magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast Unorthodox<\/a> and daily Talmud podcast Take One<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion’68,<\/em>
\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion’68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.
\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:
\n<\/em>webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israeli Minister: American Intervention in Israeli Politics \u2018Crossing a Line\u2019 LIEL LEIBOVITZ Amichai Chikli seeks calm, says Washington isn\u2019t helping . \u2018The protests are an internal Israeli political issue, and any foreign ambassador commenting on this issue, but particularly an ambassador of a friendly nation like the United States, is crossing a line,\u2019 says Minister […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102811"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102811"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102962,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102811\/revisions\/102962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}