NOSES WENT out of joint and knickers got in a twist when Israel’s new deputy foreign minister delivered her inaugural speech to the Jewish state’s diplomatic corps.
Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s new deputy foreign minister: “It is important to say that this country is ours, all of it. We didn’t come here to apologize for that.”
“We need to get back to the basic truth of our right to this land,” said Tzipi Hotovely, who is running the foreign ministry’s day-to-day operations, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retains the title of foreign minister. The land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people, she declared, and their claim to it is as old as the Bible. “It’s important to say this” when making Israel’s case before the world, and not to focus solely on Israel’s security interests. Of course security is a profound concern, Hotovely observed, but arguments grounded in justice, morality, and deep historical rights are stronger. She even quoted the medieval Jewish sage Rashi, who wrote that Genesis opens with God’s creation of the world to preempt any subsequent charge that the Jewish claim to the land was without merit.