TEL AVIV (JTA) — Israeli protesters demonstrated against President Obama’s recent statements on Israel and the Palestinians in front of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv.
Donning symbolic nooses around their necks and holding banners reading "Israel Won’t Commit Suicide," some 100 protesters from My Israel, an organization representing settlers and hard-line groups, gathered Sunday outside the embassy to protest Obama’s recent declarations on his vision for a future Palestinian state.
The protesters gathered at the same time that Obama addressed AIPAC in Washington at the pro-Israel lobby’s annual conference.
"We support America, but we can say to you Obama, you are wrong," Ayelet Shaked, one of the event’s organizers, told the crowd.
"In your speech you abandoned a friend. You betrayed the only true democracy in the Middle East, America’s only friend and ally, Israel," she said, referring to the president’s policy speech on the Middle East delivered at the U.S. State Department on May 19 in which he outlined a future Palestinian state according to pre-1967 lines combined with mutually agreed-upon land swaps.
In a statement, the My Israel group described Obama’s policy as requiring "exaggerated concessions from Israel without requesting Palestinians give up the right of return."
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