Rocker Gene Simmons Not a Fan of Obama’s Israel Policy
Image by Getty Images
It appears that President Obama can cross “Rock and Roll All Night” off his list of potential 2012 campaign songs.
The president’s recent speeches on Israel have made a critic of KISS rocker Gene Simmons, who implied on CNBC that Obama has “no [expletive] idea” about how to solve the Arab-Israeli impasse.
“If you’ve never been to the moon, you can’t issue policy about the moon. You have no [expletive] idea what it’s like on the moon,” Simmons said, apparently unaware that Obama has in fact visited Israel, if not outer space.
The musician objected to the president’s use of Israel’s pre-1967 borders as a basis for peace negotiations — ignoring, like many critics, Obama’s repeated references to land swaps, and to the borders’ historic role as part of “a well-known formula to all who have worked on this issue for a generation.”
Simmons, who was born in Haifa in 1949, has repeatedly expressed support for Israel in recent months, filming scenes for his reality TV show there earlier this year. During the trip, he dismissed Israel boycotters as “fools,” and described the visit as a “homecoming.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
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..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
