Israel: “The Jewish people are not occupiers”, Netanyahu responds to Obama’s accusations

Tensions between Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama are resurfacing as the Israeli elections on October 27 approach. In a video released Friday, the Israeli Prime Minister strongly contested the former US president's statements on the history of the Jewish people and the dispossession of the Palestinians. “Our history is not a colonial enterprise. Our land is not stolen land,” he said, deeming Barack Obama’s comments “regrettable.”

On Tuesday, during a speech in Belfast, Barack Obama spoke of the persecution suffered by Jews over the centuries and their desire to find refuge in a land to which they were historically linked. But the former president had highlighted the consequences of this installation for the Palestinians. “What is also undeniable is that they took land from people. (These people), they were evicted,” he said, before adding: “And these people, understandably, said: this is an injustice and I want my land back.”

Netanyahu and Obama, long-time adversaries

Benjamin Netanyahu rejected this historical reading by claiming the ancestral links of the Jewish people with the territory. “The Jewish people are not foreign occupiers in the land of our ancestors,” he replied. “This is our homeland. It’s called Judea,” the Israeli leader continued, referring to the biblical name for the southern West Bank, territory conquered by Israel in 1967.

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