Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday announced that he “condemns Tzipi Hotovely’s offensive remarks regarding the American Jewish community. The Jews of the Diaspora are dear to us and are an inseparable part of our people. There is no place for such attacks, and her remarks do not reflect the position of the State of Israel.”

Netanyahu’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hotovely (Likud) on Wednesday told i24News that most US Jews do not have children who are soldiers and that many of them are living “quite convenient lives,” as part of a larger explanation as to why she believes US Jews don’t understand the realities Israel faces in the region.

Deputy Foreign Minister Hotovely:
“The other issue is not understanding the complexity of the region. Most of the [American] Jews don’t have children serving as soldiers, going to the Marines, going to Afghanistan, or to Iraq. Most of them are having quite convenient lives. They don’t feel how it feels to be attacked by rockets, and I think part of it is to actually experience what Israel is dealing with on a daily basis.”

Adam Levick and Yisrael Medad responding on Twitter pointed out that Hotovely was clearly referring to Diaspora and Israeli Jewry having different worldviews and outlooks based on different life circumstances, and media spin is distorting the context of her argument.

.@TzipiHotovely‘s central argument, however it’s being distorted in the media, was this: US Jews will never know how it feels to be attacked by rockets and face life surrounded by Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria, and that this in part explains the Israeli-diaspora divide.

— Adam Levick (@adamlevick) November 23, 2017

And that a people as a collective (Diaspora Jewry) whose children do not go off to serve lack a mental, social and psychological element that adds to their survival judgment capability. Which Israelis do have.
.@adamlevick @richard_landes @TzipiHotovely https://t.co/oU4zhgN2rj

— ymedad (@ymedad) November 23, 2017

Commenting on the struggle between Reform dignitaries and the Netanyahu government over a mixed-sex prayer section by the Western Wall, the Deputy FM noted that the existing “egalitarian” platform stands empty most of the time, “and the reason it’s empty, if you’re asking me, it’s not because they don’t like the arrangement, it’s empty because most of the time those people are not even interested in going to the Kotel.”

https://is.gd/zI4OPm