Israel President Herzog’s ‘honest’ speech to the US Congress

Here’s what a truthful Herzog would admit at the Capitol on Wednesday: apartheid against Palestinians is corroding Israel itself.

Marwan Bishara
Senior political analyst at Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera

4 days ago

Israel President Herzog's 'honest' speech to the US Congress | Israel-Palestine conflict | Al Jazeera

"....When my late beloved father Chaim spoke to you as president of Israel in 1987, he boasted of our peace accords with Sadat of Egypt. And I am inclined to walk in his shoes and do the same; to boast of our Abraham accords with several Arab autocrats.

But unlike him, I can no longer keep silent as our military and civilian occupation mutates into an apartheid system in the Middle East. I do not say that lightly; I say it with a heavy heart. I do not say it out of pity for the millions of Palestinians, most of whom stubbornly linger under occupation and in refugee camps, I say it out of pity for my people and what’s become of us as decades-long occupiers and dispossessors. Our chutzpah is self-defeating. Our hasbara is wearing thin.

I never was a particularly brave or charismatic parliamentarian and head of the opposition. But that stops now, knowing I will never again have a better platform to address your people and mine. We may have become rich and powerful but we’ve never been so divided, so fanatical; so morally bankrupt...

My father boasted of our liberal democracy and respect for human rights, albeit for Jews only, considering that in our Jewish state, the right to the land, the right to settle (return), and the right to self-determination is for the Jewish collective.

But even this communitarianism has eroded with time, culminating in a government of hyper-nationalists and religious fanatics that is demonstrably bent on destroying our Jewish democracy and squashing our liberal values.

Hundreds of thousands of my fellow Jewish countrymen and women have taken to the streets every week to protest against new illiberal legislation that is bound to chip away at our institutions and freedoms, and destroy any hope of future peace and democracy in the Jewish state.

This destruction will happen if you, members of this august symbol of constitutional democracy, continue to outbid yourselves in appeasing us as we stumble towards religious autocracy. Your intentions to invite our lying, cheating prime minister to speak here for a record fourth time will only make things worse.

President Biden is right to be concerned and to warn our government of going down this road. So should you. It is a dangerous road that is bound to destroy the fabric of our society..."