JERUSALEM: A far-right Israeli lawmaker sparked anger Wednesday after he said he would not want his wife to give birth in a hospital next to Arab mothers — comments widely condemned as racist.
Bezalel Smotrich, a 36-year-old member from the nationalist right-wing Jewish Home party, made the comments on Twitter on Tuesday.
“My wife is totally not racist but after giving birth she wants to rest and doesn’t want the massive celebrations that are customary for the families of the Arab women who give birth,” he said.
Referring to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, he also tweeted that “it’s natural that my wife would not like to lie next to someone who just gave birth to a baby who might want to murder her baby in another 20 years.”
He later deleted both tweets.
Smotrich, who lives in a settlement in the occupied West Bank, has long been known for his harsh rhetoric.
His tweets were in response to reports that some Israeli hospitals were improperly segregating Jewish and Arab mothers in maternity wards.
The party leader, Naftali Bennett, said Smotrich had gone too far, overstepping the boundaries in a country that sees itself as pluralistic and democratic, even if Jews and Arabs live very separate lives and Arabs complain of discrimination.
“The national camp is not hatred of Arabs,” Bennett said at a party conference, going on to quote from the Talmud, rabbinical writings that interpret the bible, about how all human beings — Jews and Arabs — are created equal. “Everyone has a unique soul, a family, a desire to live in dignity,” he said. “We are opposed to divisive discourse among the people and hatred of the other.”
Ben Caspit, writing in the popular Ma’ariv paper, said Smotrich and his supporters were akin to Judeo-Nazis.
“No, Smotrich is not a Nazi, but he is a Jew who has come as close as possible to this questionable title,” he wrote. “A hair’s breadth away. He does not demand to set up concentration camps and to build gas chambers, but he does have a racist ideology.”
Politicians from the right, the center-right and the left offered similar condemnations, although Netanyahu stayed silent. Ahmed Tibi, an Arab member of the Israeli parliament and a gynecologist, expressed his outrage.
“It is a blatant racist comment... and many Israelis are angry at Smotrich for holding the mirror of racism in front of them,” he told the Israeli news site Ynet.
“As a doctor, if Smotrich or his wife needed medical help from me, I would give it without hesitation. I have treated many racists in the past.”
Asked if she would have a problem if an Arab doctor delivered her baby, his wife replied: “The moment of birth is a sacred moment, a pure moment. It’s a moment that is very Jewish. I’d be very pleased if Jewish hands were to touch my baby the moment it enters the world.”
Zionist MP blasted at home for anti-Arab drivel
Zionist MP blasted at home for anti-Arab drivel
Rubio plans to update Netanyahu on US-Iran talks in Israel next week, officials say
- Trump is weighing whether to take military action against Tehran as the administration surges military resources to the region
- Dozens of US fighter jets, including F-35s, F-22s and F-16s, have left bases in the US and Europe in recent days to head to the Middle East
WASHINGTON: Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to travel to Israel next week to update Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the US-Iran nuclear talks, two Trump administration officials said.
Rubio is expected to meet with Netanyahu on Feb. 28, according to the officials, who spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity to detail travel plans that have not yet been announced.
The US and Iran recently have held two rounds of indirect talks over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.
Iran has agreed to draw up a written proposal to address US concerns that were raised during this week’s Geneva talks, according to another senior US official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
That official said top national security officials gathered Wednesday in the White House Situation Room to discuss Iran, and were briefed that the “full forces” needed to carry out potential military action are expected to be in place by mid-March. The official did not provide a timeline for when Iran is expected to deliver its written response.
Officials from both the US and Iran had publicly offered some muted optimism about progress this week, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi even saying that “a new window has opened” for reaching an agreement.
“In some ways, it went well,” US Vice President JD Vance said about the talks in an interview Tuesday with Fox News Channel. “But in other ways, it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through.”
Netanyahu visited the White House last week to urge President Donald Trump to ensure that any deal about Iran’s nuclear program also include steps to neutralize Iran’s ballistic missile program and end its funding for proxy groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Trump is weighing whether to take military action against Tehran as the administration surges military resources to the region, raising concerns that any attack could spiral into a larger conflict in the Middle East.
On Friday, Trump told reporters that a change in power in Iran “seems like that would be the best thing that could happen.” He added, “For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking.”
The Trump administration has dispatched the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, from the Caribbean Sea to the Mideast to join a second carrier as well as other warships and military assets that the US has built up in the region.
Dozens of US fighter jets, including F-35s, F-22s and F-16s, have left bases in the US and Europe in recent days to head to the Middle East, according to the Military Air Tracking Alliance, a team of about 30 open-source analysts that routinely analyzes military and government flight activity.
The team says it’s also tracked more than 85 fuel tankers and over 170 cargo planes heading into the region.
Steffan Watkins, a researcher based in Canada and a member of the MATA, said he also has spotted support aircraft like six of the military’s early-warning E-3 aircraft head to a base in Saudi Arabia.
Those aircraft are key for coordinating operations with a large number of aircraft. He says they were pulled from bases in Japan, Germany and Hawaii.
