AL-QUDS (AP) – Thousands of Israeli academics and artists have urged U.S. President Joe Biden and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to shun Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to the United States next week, underlining the divide between the occupying regime’s far-right cabinet and segments of the population in the occupied territories.
In an open letter, over 3,500 signers, including well-known Israeli writer David Grossman and painter Tamar Getter, called on Biden and Guterres not to meet with Netanyahu or invite him to speak at the UN General Assembly’s yearly meeting of world leaders.
The prime minister’s office has said Netanyahu will travel to the U.S. next week to visit high-tech leaders in California before flying to New York to address the UN.
Netanyahu incites people against each other, threatens the regime’s security and economy, and turns his face away from the historical conflict that tears the regime apart – the forceful domination of the Palestinian people, the open letter read.
Netanyahu’s public itinerary so far does not feature an appointment with Biden at the White House. Biden said earlier this year he had no intention to meet Netanyahu “in the near term,” but the president softened his position in July, leaving open the possibility of informal talks between the two or a meeting on the sidelines of the General Assembly.
The regime’s rightward lurch under Netanyahu’s extremist and conservative regime that took office late last year has strained the regime’s critical ties with the U.S.
Netanyahu’s push to overhaul the regime’s judicial system — an effort to weaken the supreme court and give more power to the governing coalition — has drawn strong criticism from Washington, where officials have said the U.S.-Zionist alliance will weaken.