Kerry: Recognition of Israel as Jewish State a “Mistake” - Breaking Israel News

Kerry: Recognition of Israel as Jewish State a “Mistake”

Posted by: Lea Speyer March 14, 2014 

“Leave the presence of a fool, for there you do not meet words of knowledge.” (Proverbs 14:7)

(Photo: Facebook)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told members of Congress Thursday that Israel’s insistence that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state is a big mistake. Kerry maintained that recognition should not be a vital factor in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

“I think it’s a mistake for some people to be, you know, raising it again and again as the critical decider of their attitude towards the possibility of a state of peace, and we’ve obviously made that clear,” Kerry told members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Kerry believes that the question of a “Jewish state” was addressed in 1947 by UN Resolution 181. Resolution 181 officially granted recognition to the State of Israel. Kerry pointed out that there are “more than 30-40 mentions of a ‘Jewish state’” and that in 1988 and 2004, the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat “confirmed that he agreed it [Israel] would be a Jewish state.”

What Kerry failed to point out is that Arafat never granted official recognition to Israel as a Jewish state.

Kerry, who has been brokering a framework deal between Israel and the Palestinians, told lawmakers that both sides were still far away from reaching any sort of agreement.

“The level of mistrust is as large as any level of mistrust I’ve ever seen, on both sides,” he said.

Leaders of the Palestinian Authority have repeatedly stated that they would never recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/12314/kerry-recognition-israel-jewish-state-mistake/#h2yL3yTOZ33EYAXX.99

Natan is an artist. He is a Holocaust survivor.

Rachel Boskey

Aug. 23, 2013

Shabbat Shalom dear Facebook friends!

I want to introduce you a dear couple whom Avner Boskey and I have come to love in the last years -- Natan Friedman and his wife Shoshana. Natan and Shoshana live in our town. 

Natan is an artist. He is a Holocaust survivor who escaped death by assuming the identity of a Polish child and living in a monastery. After World War Two, Natan sailed with thousands of others, mostly young people, on the famous “Exodus” ship and he stood on Israel’s shores briefly in August 1947. But all of the Jewish people on the “Exodus” were refused entry to their homeland and were sent back to Europe.

 Natan finally arrived in Israel on May 15, 1948. In Israel, Natan became an accomplished scientist. His wife Shoshana was a schoolteacher with a master’s degree in English literature. They have two children and seven grandchildren. 

Natan has created many amazing works of art over the years, both paintings and sculptures. Some of them reflect the traumas and horrors he experienced as a Jewish child in Poland and many others reflect his life of many years in Israel. Next week Natan and his art will be featured on an Israeli TV program. 

Today I was privileged to photograph some of Natan’s works which will be shown on the TV program. To know Natan and Shoshana is to love them! — with Avner Boskey and ‎נתן פרידמן‎. (16 photos)