Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) sharply criticized US Secretary of State John Kerry Monday, over Kerry's remarks claiming that Israel is bound to become an "apartheid state" if it ceased conceding to the Palestinian Authority (PA)'s demands.
Katz connected Kerry's comments to Holocaust Memorial Day.
"Holocaust Day ceremonies. [We hear] terrible descriptions [of] how the Nazis and their collaborators, drenched in hate and race theory, turned millions of defenseless Jews into dust and ashes - and the world stood by in silence," Katz wrote, in a Facebook post.
"And now the Secretary of State describes Israel as an 'apartheid state,'" Katz lamented. "Us? The Jewish state, [which was] established to protect itself after [it was] intimidated with threats of extermination?"
"Kerry, shame on you!" he concluded. "There are thing you just can't say."
Reports surfaced early Monday that Kerry had made a number of inflammatory comments during a closed-door meeting Friday, including the 'apartheid' remark and predictions of renewed Palestinian Arab violence against Israelis.
He also suggested that a change in either the Israeli or Palestinian leadership could make achieving a peace deal more feasible, and lashed out against Israeli construction in Judea and Samaria.
Kerry also said, according to The Daily Beast, that both Israeli and Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders share the blame for the current impasse in the talks.
Kerry also said that at some point, he might unveil his own peace deal and tell both sides to “take it or leave it.”
“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second class citizens - or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state,” Kerry was quoted as having told the group of senior officials and experts from the U.S., Western Europe, Russia, and Japan.
“Once you put that frame in your mind, that reality, which is the bottom line, you understand how imperative it is to get to the two state solution, which both leaders, even yesterday, said they remain deeply committed to,” he claimed.