World Bulletin / News Desk

Elie Wiesel who has been known for his anti-Palestinian stance has put his weight behind Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's March 3 speech to Congress on the dangers of Iran's nuclear program - an address that has antagonized the White House and divided American Jews.

Well connected Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who has tauented pro-Palestinian Human Rights protestors in the past, said on Thursday he is placing full-page advertisements in two of the leading U.S. newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, featuring Wiesel's endorsement of Netanyahu's speech.

President Barack Obama has declined to meet the Israeli leader, citing U.S. protocol, to not to meet world leaders before national elections, due to take place in Israel on March 17.

The systematic discrimination against the Arab population by Israel and the efforts to Judaise the Arab areas to transform the politics and force them to deny their heritage by labelling them as Israeli-Arabs has caused a serious decline in their living standards. With Arabs having major obstacles to constructions of new buildings, lack of water and electricity it comes as no surprise that Wiesel who in a 2001 editorial dehumanized Palestinians and Muslims arguing that only Jews should have sovereignty in Jerusalem, is supporting Netanyahu.

Wiesel, 86, who has written extensively of his imprisonment in Nazi camps, is the latest to join a fray that has exposed deep divisions among American Jews over the policy and propriety behind a speech in which Netanyahu is expected to criticize Obama's effort to forge an international nuclear deal with Iran.

The United States boasts the largest Jewish population outside Israel. American Jews, who make up roughly 2 percent of the U.S. population, historically have been a strong pro-Israel force in American politics. 

Students and scholars around the world find his silence on the oppression of Palestinians to be hypocritical and his indifferece to their pain and suffering takes away his staonce on a moral higher ground especially considering his trilogy entitled Against Silence where makes a passionate and pios please to his reader to fight oppression in all forms.

John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, invited Netanyahu. Detractors say Netanyahu, who has long warned the West of the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran, is working with Republicans to thumb their noses at Obama, a Democrat. Neither Boehner nor Netanyahu consulted the U.S. president.

About 70 percent of Jewish Americans vote Democratic and roughly a quarter identifies as Republican.

Some of Netanyahu's critics accuse him of placing ties to Republicans above Israel's relations with the United States, its most important ally. U.S.-born Ron Dermer, Israel's ambassador to Washington, is a former Republican political operative.

Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and the most senior U.S. senator, said this week he would not attend Netanyahu's speech and accused Republicans of orchestrating what he called "a tawdry and high-handed stunt that has embarrassed not only Israel but the Congress itself."