Heilemann Defends Kerry: Claim That Israel Could Become 'Apartheid State' Was 'Not Unreasonable'

April 29th, 2014 8:04 AM

Demonstrating once again that Israel remains a favorite whipping boy of the liberal media, there was John Heilemann of New York magazine on today's Morning Joe defending John Kerry's grotesque claim that Israel risked becoming an "apartheid state."

According to Heilemann, Kerry's ugly accusation was "not actually an unreasonable statement."  To his credit, Joe Scarborough promptly riposted, saying "I couldn't disagree with you more."  View the video after the jump.



On a day when the Morning Joe panel opened the show by hammering Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling for his ugly racist comments, there was Heilemann depicting Israelis as a "racial" minority.  Surely Heilemann knows that Judaism is a not a race, but a religion to which people of all and any races can and do belong.

 

JOE SCARBOROUGH: John Heilemann, what do you think? He was obviously very frustrated that the peace process that he'd been pushing so hard went off track. I wonder if that was just frustration talking to world leaders.

JOHN HEILEMANN: My gut says that it's more frustration than it was a calculated gaffe. To me it's the language of op-eds rather than the language of diplomacy. That is the kind of thing an op-ed writers, you know, someone like Tom Friedman, someone like David Remnick will put out there. It's not actually an unreasonable statement, risks the decline into a situation in which a political, a racial minority is governing in an undemocratic way a racial majority. There are many people who are concerned that is a possible thing that could happen.

SCARBOROUGH: I just have concern here: I couldn't disagree with you more. And I couldn't disagree with you more for 20 years just about you saying that it's a reasonable statement.