Former Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni slammed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
and presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Tuesday night
for making Israel an issue in the US presidential election.
In an
interview with CNN, Christiane Amanpour asked Livni how she felt about Romney
“very clearly aligning himself with the government of prime minister
Netanyahu.”
Livni did not disagree and issued veiled criticism of both
men.
“Since Israel’s establishment, relations between Israel and the
United States were bipartisan,” Livni said. “This is the way it should be. The
idea of the State of Israel being part of the agenda in the elections in the
United States is wrong.
The relations are not based on partisan issues
but on shared values. Israel is part of the free world led by the United States
no matter what happens in the region. This is the reason why any American
president can and should work with any Israeli prime minister and vice
versa.”
When Livni was asked about Romney’s comparison of Israeli and
Palestinian culture, she at first resisted and said that responding would be
tantamount to interfering in the US election. (Romney, later explaining his
remarks made during his visit to Israel, wrote in the
National Review, that he
had “suggested that the choices a society makes about its culture play a role in
creating prosperity, and that the significant disparity between Israeli and
Palestinian living standards was powerfully influenced by it.”) Livni criticized
Romney’s statements.
“It is also part of the reality that the
Palestinians don’t have their own state now and unfortunately they have been
under an occupation since 1967 that should be ended for Israel’s sake,” she told
CNN.
Livni is on a weeklong tour of the United States in which she is
speaking for American Friends of the IDF. She wrote on her Facebook page that
she would also be going to meetings and giving interviews.
In the CNN
interview, Livni accused Netanyahu of failing to make difficult decisions
regarding the integration of the haredi community into the broader Israeli
society.
When Amanpour asked if Israel was being “sold to the
ultra-Orthodox,” Livni responded bluntly: “Unfortunately yes,
politically.”
She continued: “Unfortunately they now have more power than
they should. And in a way, the Likud Party and other parties gave them a
monopoly on the Jewishness of the State of Israel.”
Livni singled out the
prime minister as being particularly culpable. “Netanyahu said himself that for
him politically the ultra-Orthodox are his natural partners,” she said, later
adding, “It has been proven that Netanyahu doesn’t want to [alienate the
haredim] and this is going to be part of future elections in
Israel.”
Addressing controversy over haredi enlistment in the IDF, an
issue that caused a fracture in the ruling coalition when Kadima withdrew from
the government last month, she said the issue needs to be solved by all Zionist
parties coming together and demanding that a solution be found
immediately.
Livni explained that the values of Israel are being
threatened.
“Politically, when you have a part of Israeli society
believing that the source of authority is not the law and the Supreme Court but
the Torah, the Halacha and the rabbis, we have a clash between the values of
democracy and what I believe are our values as a Jewish state.”
During
the interview, Livni spoke extensively about the need to institute a
constitution, adding this would allow Israel to reach a peace agreement with the
Palestinians and solve issues pertaining to the ultra-Orthodox
community.
Turning to Syria, she said the Assad regime, which has
chemical weapons, threatens Israel.
“The expectation by others for us to
just look, see and watch is not acceptable,” she said. “The fact that the
international community is, excuse me, quite impotent on this issue sends a very
sad and problematic message to the region.”