Labor Party MK Omer Bar-Lev assailed Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Tuesday for comments attributed to him calling US Secretary of State John Kerry “obsessive” and “messianic.”
“Publicly clashing with the Americans is irresponsible and damaging to Israel’s security, international standing, and its relations with the United States,” said Bar-Lev, a member of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Bar-Lev was responding to a report in the Yedioth Ahronoth in which Ya’alon is quoted as telling associates in private conversations that Kerry “should take his Nobel Prize and leave us alone.”
“Abu Mazen lives and dies by our sword,” Ya’alon is quoted as saying by Yedioth. “Once we leave Judea and Samaria, he is finished. In effect, during these past months, there haven’t been negotiations with the Palestinians, but with the Americans.”
“The only thing that can ‘save’ us is for John Kerry to win his Nobel Prize and leave us alone,” the defense minister reportedly said.
