US presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke calls Netanyahu ‘racist’

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke accused Netanyahu of racism, a step beyond his last criticism of Israel’s prime minister. 

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Presidential hopeful Robert “Beto” O’Rourke doubled down on his criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday when he charged that Israel’s leader was a racist after a town hall meeting at the University of Iowa.

At first, in answer to a voter’s question, O’Rourke accused Netanyahu of having “joined forces with far-right parties who are inherently racist in their speech and the way that they want to treat their fellow human beings in that part of the world.”

When speaking to reporters afterward, though sounding positive about the ties between the two countries, the former three-term Texas Congressman went a step further, denouncing the prime minister as a “racist.”

“The U.S.-Israel relationship is one of the most important relationships that we have on the planet,” O’Rourke said, “and that relationship, if it is to be successful, must transcend partisanship in the United States, and it must be able to transcend a prime minister who is racist as he warns about Arabs coming to the polls, who wants to defy any prospect for peace as he threatens to annex the West Bank and who has sided with a far-right racist party in order to maintain his hold on power.”

The 46-year-old Democrat was referring to a campaign pledge Netanyahu made Saturday night to “exercise Israeli sovereignty” over parts of Judea and Samaria if the right-wing bloc he heads wins Tuesday’s elections.

This remark went a step further than the last time he spoke about Netanyahu this way. On March 19, when speaking of the Arab-Israeli conflict at a campaign stop in a New Hampshire college, O’Rourke stopped short of accusing Netanyahu of racism himself, saying only that Netanyahu was “openly siding with racists.”

In contrast, O’Rourke’s criticism of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas was more mild, saying only that Abbas was “ineffectual” in “bringing his side to the table.”

During his unsuccessful run against Senator Ted Cruz in 2018, O’Rourke took campaign contributions from the J Street PAC. J Street supports the creation of a Palestinian State, a position unpopular with the majority of Israelis and pro-Israel supporters in the U.S.

As a member of the House of Representatives, O’Rourke voted in 2014 against emergency funding for Israel’s Iron Dome. He was also one of 49 congressmen who boycotted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress in 2015, in which he urged the legislature to vote against the nuclear accord with Iran.