Bayit Yehudi MK who implied Kerry is anti-Semitic: It wasn't personal

Yogev responds to Ambassador Shapiro request for an apology: "America and Europe want to evict the Jewish People from its land. Kerry is anti-Israel."

By LAHAV HARKOV
Motti Yogev 370 (photo credit: Courtesy Bayit Yehudi)
Motti Yogev 370
(photo credit: Courtesy Bayit Yehudi)
The implication that US Secretary of State John Kerry is motivated by anti-Semitism was not personal, MK Mordechai Yogev explained in a letter he penned to US Ambassador Dan Shapiro Sunday.
Yogev (Bayit Yehudi) said he wrote the letter after Shapiro asked that he apologize to Kerry.
“I don’t know Mr. John Kerry personally. This isn’t a personal matter, it is one of deep significance, which I thought was important to express,” Yogev wrote. “These negotiations don’t have a partner, neither for peace nor for security, and there is no demographic problem or apartheid, just American and European pressure seeking to bring our enemies to the dangerous 1967 lines and evict the Jewish people from its land.”
According to Yogev, “Mr. John Kerry doesn’t understand the situation. Maybe the expression “anti-Semitic” was inappropriate, but since he showed his pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel opinions in the past, John Kerry cannot be a fair broker in the Israeli-Palestinian matter.”
Yogev’s letter came after an interview with Israel Radio Thursday, in which he said that Kerry is not a fair mediator in peace talks because he has “anti-Israel roots.”
“Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is acting under Kerry’s obsessive pressure, which may have anti-Semitic undertones,” Yogev told Israel Radio. “Kerry is not here to reach a compromise. He wants to decrease the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel and create a Palestinian state.”
In Sunday’s letter, Yogev thanked the US for its cooperation and aid over the years.
However, he wrote that the “obsessive process” Kerry is leading seeks to remove Jews from the Land of Israel “out of a desire to establish a Palestinian terror state on Israeli land.”
Yogev emphasized five points in his letter. First, that the Jewish people have a “Godly and eternal” connection to the Land of Israel. Second, that Kerry is prejudiced against Israel. Third, that Kerry does not understand the Middle East. Fourth, that it is immoral for the US to expect Israel to release terrorists when it will not release Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard. Finally, Yogev wrote that Kerry “threatened boycotts and delegitimization” “These are things that are hard to hear, but I thought that even to our great friend the US we must tell the truth that most of the Israeli public thinks and feels,” Yogev added.
The Bayit Yehudi lawmaker asserted that the Torah explains that the Jewish presence in Israel is just, and that justice is “written in blood on the pages of history.”
A Bayit Yehudi source said of the letter: “It is unfortunate that MK Yogev chose a threepage clarification over a one-sentence apology.”