Netanyahu Slams Kerry for Comment on Israeli Boycotts

Image by getty images
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed John Kerry for his warning that Israel would face more international boycotts if the peace process fails.
“Attempts to impose a boycott on the State of Israel are immoral and unjust. Moreover, they will not achieve their goal,” Netanyahu said Sunday at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting.
He was responding to the U .S. secretary of state’s remarks the previous day at the Munich Security Conference. Saying that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot continue because it is “not sustainable,” Kerry continued: “You see for Israel there is an increasing delegitimization campaign that has been building up. People are very sensitive to it; there is talk of boycott and other kinds of things. Are we all going to be better with all of that?”
In his response, Netanyahu also said that boycotts push the peace process further away by causing the Palestinians “to adhere to their intransigent positions,” and that “no pressure will cause me to concede the vital interests of the State of Israel, especially the security of Israel’s citizens.”
Kerry’s comments to reporters in Munich also were slammed by other Israeli government officials.
“You can’t force the State of Israel to negotiate with a gun to our heads while we are discussing the most critical of our national security interests,” Minister of Strategic Affairs Yuval Steinitz said.
Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, whose remarks on the peace process last week almost led to a government coalition crisis, also criticized Kerry, saying that Israel ”expect(s) our friends around the world to stand beside us, against anti-Semitic boycott efforts targeting Israel, and not for them to be their amplifier.”
“Friends, let us be clear to all of the advice givers: Never has a nation abandoned their land because of economic threats. We are no different,” Bennett said.
Kerry said that “for Israel, the stakes are also enormously high” if the peace process fails, alluding to possible violence as “a response from disappointed Palestinians and the Arab community.”
He said that he would continue to press for a peace agreement because “I believe in the possibility or I wouldn’t pursue this.” He added that “the consequences of failure are unacceptable.”
In recent days a state-run pension fund in Norway has divested from Israeli companies.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture In ‘Andor’ season 2, a Wannsee Conference reference, and a new sort of space Jew
-
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
-
Opinion The profound Yom HaShoah lesson we desperately need to remember under Trump
-
Opinion How Trump’s attacks on the university target what has made America great for Jews
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.