Israel’s Prime Minister To Review His Appointments

Netanyahu announced Baratz’s appointment as his chief spokesman late Wednesday, and soon after, old Facebook posts had emerged in which Baratz suggested that Obama is anti-Semitic and Kerry can not be taken seriously.

“Allow me to be a bit blunt, which is a break from my usual moderation”, Baratz wrote. “So much tolerance and understanding that they are willing to give [Iran] an atom[ic bomb]”.

Referring to Mr Kerry, Mr Baratz said he hoped “the state department will wake up and begin to see the world through the eyes of a person whose mental age exceeds 12”. Yet in the days leading up to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s White House visit the size of that increase continues to grow precipitously. It will be the first meeting between Obama and Netanyahu since the US and five other world powers reached an agreement with Iran about that country’s nuclear program this past July.

She said she believed Washington had a duty to bring Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table, and “as president I will never stop working to advance the goal of two states for two peoples living in peace, security and dignity”. “The comments I posted were written without thought, at times in jest, in a language befitting social media and a private individual”.

On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said “it’s readily apparent that that apology was warranted”, but the decision whether or not to withdraw Baratz’s nomination is Netanyahu’s to make.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to visit Washington for talks with President Barack Obama next week, when the package is likely to be discussed and its broad outlines may be agreed.

“I read for the first time the comments published by Dr. Ran Baratz on the Internet about the United States president and public figures in the US. That being the case, we obviously expect government officials from any country, especially our closest allies, to speak respectfully and truthfully about senior USA government officials”.

In a column that he wrote for an online media magazine a year ago, Baratz offered a scathing critique of Kerry’s suggestion that the emergence of Islamic radicalism in the Middle East could be traced to the lingering Israel-Palestine conflict. The comments drew a strong rebuke from the president’s bureau.

Baratz’s appointment still has to be approved by the cabinet. He is not accompanying Netanyahu to Washington.

Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party won a resounding victory against a strongly-tipped centre-Left opposition grouping, the Zionist Union, largely by appealing to supporters of Right-wing parties like the Jewish Home, which opposes a Palestinian state.

Foxman was expressing publicly what several Jewish leaders said privately on Thursday following the revelations about Baratz’s Facebook diatribes: they were harshly critical of the appointment but even more exasperated by its timing.