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Sept. 23, 2010 – speaking at his Global Initiative:
Russian immigrants in Israel pose an obstacle to a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians
Jerusalem (Haaretz/CNN) — Suggesting that Russian immigrants in Israel pose an obstacle to a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians, former U.S. President Bill Clinton stepped into the mire of Middle Eastern politics this week, prompting a wave of criticism from Israeli politicians.
Clinton, speaking at a panel discussion of his Clinton Global Initiative, told audience members: “An increasing number of the young people in the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] are the children of Russians and settlers, the hardest-core people against a division of the land. This presents a staggering problem. It’s a different Israel. Sixteen percent of Israelis speak Russian.”
Referring to the more than 1 million Russian immigrants who have come to the Jewish state since 1989, Clinton said, “They’ve just got there, it’s their country, they’ve made a commitment to the future there. … They can’t imagine any historical or other claims that would justify dividing it.”
… Clinton recalled a 2000 conversation he had with then-Israeli Cabinet Minister and former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky in which he asked why Sharansky could not support the Camp David peace proposal he helped broker. Sharansky’s response, according to Clinton, was, “I can’t vote for this, I’m Russian. … I come from one of the biggest countries in the world to one of the smallest. You want me to cut it in half. No, thank you.”
Clinton responded, “Don’t give me this, you came here from a jail cell. It’s a lot bigger than your jail cell.” [Deleted in CNN version]
Israel’s nationalist political party Yisrael Beiteinu, headed by Israeli Foreign Minister and Soviet Union-born Avigdor Lieberman, also condemned Clinton’s comments, accusing the former president of “meddling in the internal affairs of another country.”
ADL dubs Clinton’s Russian immigration remark ‘amateur analysis’
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
