Benjamin Netanyahu’s Claim to Speak for All Jews
Is Disputed, Characterized As “Arrogant”
Allan C. Brownfeld, Editor
Special Interest Report
April 2015
Much attention has been paid to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s
claims to speak not only for his own country, but for Jews throughout the
world who are citizens of other countries, including American Jews. This
claim is being widely challenged.
Early in February, Netanyahu said he was not just the prime minister of
Israel but also “a representative of the entire Jewish people.” (Washington
Post, Feb. 12, 2015) It is considered unprecedented for the leader of one
country to claim to speak in the name of millions of men and women who are
citizens of other countries simply because of a shared religious faith.
J Street, a liberal pro-Israel lobbying group, declared: “Israel’s Prime
Minister said he would be representing all Jews when he addresses Congress …
He said he’s coming to Washington ‘not just as the Prime Minister of Israel
but as a representative of the entire Jewish people.’ He’s in the middle of
a tough election campaign, battling along with other party leaders for the
right to represent Israelis, but he certainly can’t claim to speak for Jews
in the United States … Benjamin Netanyahu has his own constituents. Coming
here to undermine a president who was elected with the votes of 69 per cent
of American Jews, while having the audacity to claim he represents us, is
real chutzpah.”
Editorially, The Forward (Feb. 11, 2015) asked the question, “Who Speaks for
the Jews?” It states: “By rushing to Paris to march, lecture and promote
immig¬ration to Israel after the terrorist attacks in January, Netanyahu
rankled many of the Jews he was ostensibly there to help, turning what
should have essentially been a shiva (mourning) call to comfort the grieving
into an uncomfortable political exercise. And by claiming to represent all
Jews in his plea to a GOP Congress to defy a Democratic president, Netanyahu
risks the ‘Israelization’ or even the ‘Judaization’ of the debate over
Iran’s nuclear program.”
According to The Forward, “We have survived into modern times because we
haven’t relied on one leader — a king or prelate or pope — and instead
embraced the fact that we are diverse in more ways than we can count … We’ve
learned to find vitality and sustenance in a dynamic pluralism that resists
centralization … Not all our lives are consumed by terror and hate. Not all
our lives revolve around Israel. Editors at The Forward have been penning
editorials for more than a century, but we wouldn’t presume to speak for all
Jews. Neither should anyone else.”
On March 1, just before leaving to address a joint session of Congress,
Prime Minister Netanyahu tweeted that, “I feel that I am an emissary … of
the entire Jewish people.” (Washington Times, March 2, 2015). Sen. Diane
Feinstein (D-CA) declared: “Netanyahu doesn’t speak for me … I think it is a
rather arrogant statement. I think the Jewish community is like any other
community, there are different points of view. I think that arrogance does
not befit Israel.”
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister, agreed that Israel can
speak only on behalf of its own citizens “and in no way presumes to
represent or speak in the name of Jews who are citizens of other countries.”
That was 1950. Now, in 2015, Benjamin Netanyahu has taken it upon himself to
speak in the name of all Jews, what¬ever their nationality, citizenship or
point view. As J Street, The Forward, and many other Jewish voices have made
clear, Mr. Netanyahu has no mandate to speak for anyone but himself and
those who have elected him. •
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