Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein met with American comedian Roseanne Barr in his office on Tuesday. Edelstein praised Barr for being an important voice against boycotts of Israel and the BDS movement.
Edelstein said he was glad to host Barr and her mother and that he was touched when they told him about their visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City.
”I told them about the first personal note I placed in the Western Wall on the day I made Aliyah, in which I expressed my hope that many Jews would be able to do it, just like they (Barrr and her mother) have done,” Edelstein said after the meeting. ”I presented them with a bottle from the Gvaot Winery in the Binyamin region and thanked Barr again for supporting the Jewish and Israeli truth.”
Barr was a keynote speaker at the Yedioth Ahronoth Jerusalem conference on the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement Monday. She said, among other things: “People didn’t know I was Jewish because I’m not the American stereotype. I was privy to hearing things that people say about Jews that they wouldn’t say if they knew I was Jewish.”
“What I believed was criticism of Israel turned into garden variety anti-Semitism, with the code word ‘Rothschild,’” she said, adding, “I’m not here to defend the indefensible. Israel has many thing that need correction, like many other states. I pray that all that’s wrong is being corrected now.”
“We Jews can be rude, commanding and somewhat more intransigent than others at times,” she conceded. “And yet Jews don’t care what religions other people are, and would never deny others the right to worship.”
“Make no mistake,” she said, “BDS activists are paid directly or indirectly by Judenrein Arab states. Pharaohs and fuehrers never leave the Jewish people for very long. BDS doesn’t want peace, doesn’t want peace negotiations. It uses occupation as a code word.”