Interior minister calls on Netanyahu, Liberman to prevent senior official from participating in left-wing group’s conference.
By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman on Thursday urging them to reconsider the decision to send a senior diplomat to next week’s J Street conference in Washington.In years past, official Israeli representatives in Washington boycotted events organized by the lobby that bills itself as “pro-Israel and pro-peace.”But this year, the deputy head of the mission, Barukh Binah, will attend and even speak at the conference.Binah, who holds the title of ambassador, just finished a four-year stint as the deputy director-general for North America and before that held the prestigious post of Israel’s consul-general to the Midwest in Chicago.“I am asking you to intervene immediately and prevent the deputy mission head from participating in the J Street conference,” Yishai wrote.“This organization is not pro-Israel. It is more similar to organizations that have a goal of harming the state. The organization is at the very least pro-Palestinian, acting systematically against the State of Israel, its army and its citizens.”Yishai noted that while the IDF was recently taking steps to protect Israel from terrorists’ rocket fire, a J Street press release expressed concern about “air strikes on Gaza that have killed over a dozen Palestinian civilians.”Israeli officials have said that approximately 26 Palestinians were killed in Gaza during the operation and all were terrorists launching attacks, except for two or three. When J Street issued its statement, 16 terrorists and two civilians had been killed.J Street subsequently revised the statement on its website by removing the reference to the “dozen Palestinian civilians.”A spokeswoman for the organization expressed regret over the error and said J Street had misreported the number of civilian casualties “based on an unfounded report.” She emphasized that the mistake was corrected “within a couple of hours of the publication of the original statement.”In his letter, Yishai made reference to controversial statements attributed to left-wing activists affiliated with the organization and steps taken by J Street that were seen as problematic by Israeli government officials.Yishai said it was wrong to legitimize J Street by sending Binah to the conference, and said that there should be no contact between Israel and the organization.J Street declined to comment.
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