Israeli lawmaker censured for addressing AIPAC protesters

A Knesset member who was invited to the 2017 AIPAC conference addressed a number of protesters as well, for which she was criticized. 

Member of Knesset (MK) Tamar Zandberg from the Opposition’s left-wing Meretz party was criticized by several media outlets for addressing a group of protesters at the 2017 America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in Washington, D.C.

“Member of Knesset Tamar Zandberg came outside to be with the #JewishResistance,” is what IfNotNow, an organization composed of American Jews working to “end American Jewish support for the occupation” in Judea and Samaria, wrote on Twitter.

“Tamar, thank you for standing with IfNotNow,” they tweeted.

In a blog published this week on Times of Israel, Zandberg, who attended the AIPAC conference, appeared to justify her decision to address IfNotNow.

“AIPAC has always, and still now, was about unconditional support to Israel without taking a stand,” she wrote. “To be pro-Israel does not mean to be pro-occupation and it does not mean defending the settlements at all costs. Now more than ever, it’s clear that it is Israel’s interest to end the occupation in a two state solution.”

Arguing that a full annexation of Judea and Samaria would turn the Jewish state into a country “that would effectively be an undemocratic regime in which different rights are given depending on ethnicity,” Zandberg claimed that her actions were patriotic.

“There is no greater deed of patriotism than opposing the occupation and saving the Zionist vision of a national homeland for the Jewish People in the land of Israel,” she said.

According to a recent poll, 76 percent of Israelis, fearing regional instability and suspicious of Palestinian intentions, want to retain full security control of Judea and Samaria, while 81 percent say it is important that Israel retain sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, which borders the Hashemite Kingdom.

Zandberg’s Meretz party, which supports a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority that is primarily mapped according to Israel’s boundaries before the Six Day War in 1967, has only five out of 120 seats in the Knesset.

By: World Israel News Staff