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(September 17, 2024 / JNS) Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid discussed advancing a deal to return the 101 hostages still being held captive by Hamas in Gaza since Oct. 7 with former President Barack Obama in Washington on Monday.
“I thanked him for his public support and his efforts to secure the return of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza,” Lapid wrote on social media on Tuesday. “I told him that we all need to work together to ensure a deal that will bring the hostages home.”
The head of the Yesh Atid Party drew criticism for the meeting.
Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, told JNS that “the far left-wing Lapid meeting with the most anti-Israel president, Obama,” gives the former U.S. president “respect and legitimacy he should never be given.”
“During his presidency, Obama gave Iran a pathway to nukes, promoted and refused to veto anti-Israel U.N. resolutions, falsely claiming everything past the 1949 armistice line is Arab territory including Jerusalem and appointed the most anti-Israel people to important posts,” Klein said.
He added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “should be making the decision on meeting former U.S. presidents, not extremist out-of-power Lapid.”
“Obama should leave politics,” wrote Michael Doran, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute. “The intense concentration of unelected and unaccountable power that he represents contradicts the constitution.”
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