Netanyahu rejects Obama’s land remarks: “We’re Jews in Judea”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday rejected former U.S. President Barack Obama’s remarks that Israel had taken land from Palestinians and lost moral ground.

“The Jewish people are not foreign occupiers in the land of our forefathers,” Netanyahu said in a video response. “Our history is not a colonial enterprise. Our land is not stolen land. This is our homeland.”

“We’re not the Dutch in Indonesia. We’re not the Belgians in the Congo. We’re Jews in Judea,” he added.

Netanyahu said Israel was not the obstacle to peace and argued that the central obstacle was the refusal of its enemies to recognize the Jewish people’s right to a state.

“A peace built on illusions will crash against the rocks of Middle Eastern reality,” Netanyahu said. “Israel will not gamble with its survival.”

Obama made his remarks earlier this week in Belfast, where he said Jews had “took land off people” and had been “excessive,” while arguing that Israel had ceded moral ground in its treatment of Palestinians.