She tweeted that she was on a shopping spree at a store outside London just before returning to Israel. Settler PR flack, David HaIvri (né Jason David Axelrod), tweeted jokingly: “How’s the coffee in London?” To which she replied: “Really strong and black!” He replied: “Always the best.” You can see the entire exchange in this screenshot including Ha’Ivri’s nod-and-wink English tweet reaffirming their mutual hate for Obama.
By the way, I think we can safely assume the type of “strong black coffee” both would love is Ben Carson!
Some further context is in order: Mozes is in the UK accompanying her husband, Interior Minister Silvan Shalom, who was addressing a Bicom conference, UK-Israel Shared Strategic Challenges. So while her husband was representing the State in an Israel Lobby hasbara effort, she was throwing away some of her family billions (she’s an heiress of the Mozes family fortune) on a London shopping spree.
Alternatively, since she joined her husband on official State business, is this tweet part of a continuing campaign by the State to revile the President of the United States? Considering that she’d already made racist taunts against Obama earlier, the repetition of them in a more cutesy-pie way does lead one to believe that neither her husband nor his boss has any problems with it.
Her interlocutor is a settler who represents the most vicious and homicidal of the Hebron settlers, HaIvri. He lives in the settlement of Tapuach, where the Jewish serial killer Eden Natan Zada sought refuge before he slaughtered Palestinians on a bus. Earlier in his life HaIvri-Axelrod was a devout follower of Kach and Meir Kahane. He was arrested once for defiling a mosque and celebrating the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
For the spouse of a cabinet minister to engage with him would be as if Michelle Obama or Laura Bush tweeted to David Duke or a Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. The difference of course is that such a thing could not happen in the U.S., but certainly can and does in Israel. The settlers are Israel’s Klan. Ha’Ivri is one of their chief enablers. Israel’s Klan is, in essence, at the heart of political power in Israel.
In her first tweet in the thread, she notes she dropped some major shekels at the Primark store in Oxford, which she calls the “best value in the kingdom.” If her estimation is correct, how did the retailer get to be that way? By paying poor Bengali women next to nothing for sewing and knitting its clothing and then abandoning them when they become victims of the corruption and greed of the factory-owner. This is one of the companies whose workers were victims of the Rana Plaza disaster, when their factory fell down on their heads. It’s taken years for the retailers to accept any responsibility for their suffering. Primark did finally in 2014.
All this means that one of the richest women in Israel shops at a discount clothing store in the UK, which exploits poor Bengali women. Considering the privilege she enjoys as one of the eighteen Israeli oligarch families which own or finance an enormous portion of the Israeli economy, she has no need to pinch pennies (or shekels) shopping so down-market. Go figure.
Thanks for research assistance from Dena Shunra.
[Comment deleted: comments that are off topic will be deleted & further comment rule violations may result in moderation]
Well what did those recent flying metal tubes damage? Nothing. Why should the world give any notice to them so long the occupation and siege continues? Actually Palestinians in Gaza are firing rockets to the areas their families owned before somebody came and stole those lands.
Mr Silverstein is an American and an Israeli minister’s wife and media person is insulting his president with clearly racist ways and political aims. Especially in these times, when the skin color is a very acute “problem” for many white Americans and obviously also for many Israeli Jews, his choice of what he writes is understandable and important.
What would you think if some US minister’s (secretary in USA) wife and media person would joke in Twitter how good lampshades or candles could be produced of the Israeli prime minister? It would be equally tasteless as joking about a black US president’s skin color just when US police has been caught of shooting numerous unarmed blacks and a white lunatic had performed a mass-murder. Without doubt the anti-Semitism howling after such “lamp-joke” would be unheard in volume and the Gaza’s militants could meanwhile fire tens of their skyrockets so that it would not be even noticed by the Israeli and Jewish media.
Actually the US media seems to be rather “silenced” with this Israeli “coffee story”. Imagine the noisy long lasting media fury if a Russian or Arab minister’s wife would have made that same joke. We all can only speculate the reasons behind this relative silence and why Arab and Russian “wifes” do not make such racist jokes (maybe their cultured upbringing explains this more than the freedom of speech explanation).
@Simo
“Well what did those recent flying metal tubes damage? ”
If those flying metal tubes landed anywhere near your home or family, you’d be singing another tune.
If Israeli F-16s & helicopter gunships wiped out 20 members of yr family with a single missile you’d be singing a far different tune.
You’re living in the past Mitchy. The majority of diaspora Jewry are no longer emotionally invested in your dramas. Let’s say you’re house gets hit by a Grad, katyusha, or what have you. If I’m a decent sort, I might stop for a moment, utter an insincere; “oh my, what a tragedy” or two and then move on. If I’m an asshole like most people, I might think; “better him than me” if I bother at all. So if you’re not prepared to engage the subject matter at hand I can almost guarantee you’re not gonna win any brownie points fishing for sympathy, Capiche?
This idiot is your foreign ministers wife. Have Israelis gone insane? 60 years of aid and you make racist jokes against our president.
Interior Minister’s wife.
I just saw that you moderated my first message. Are you trying to mask current events?
@Yonathan: You just violated the comnent rules again. Instead of complaining about your comment being killed, figure out why it was & don’t do it again. Read the comment rules carefully so that doesn’t happen. Read especially about “on topic” and what that means. And if your comment is killed don’t complain, because I interpret the rules and if you want the privilege of commenting here you follow them. Capiche?
Wow! For someone who espouses democracy, you find it necessary to censor all comments. That’s not what democracy is all about. Only a coward does that!
@ janile: If I censored “all” comments I’d have nothing to do but use my censor’s red pencil. However, I take a minute off here & there to actually write blog posts!
There are many, many places on the internet where you can read about the latest missiles from Gaza, Yonathan. Or you could even get your own website and write about them! Meanwhile, Richard will write about what he’s interested in, not what you’re interested in.
Richard’s sense of priorities is hardly unique. Haaretz remarked that the number of international media outlets that have reported this tasteless “joke” is “seemingly endless”. And I bet that very few of them have found it worth their while to report on just another one of those ineffectual rockets.
I think that there is a shared feeling that that joke betrayed a widespread mentality that “official” Israel has been trying to hide thus far. Hence the interest.
The rocket is indeed not important but the UN report (with whatever twist one choose to put on it) and the Druze lynch seem to be more pressing and interesting. Two subject that were touched before often.
What does one have to do with the other? Why does anger at the Palestinians make it OK to degrade our president over the color of his skin? It’s as if the wife of secretary of state John Kerry were making Jew jokes about Netanyahu. What the hell has happened to Israel. Your acting like some southern red neck state in the deep south of the US.
Again, the wife of the minister of god knows what tweets back her tasteless joke . She is not the Israeli equivalent of Laura Bush or MIchelle Obama . Barely Patrick F Kennedy’s spouse – if anyone can find out who whe is …
Yehudit (“Judy” ‘alek) Mozes is a genuine ‘frecha’ and extremely stupid.
@Nimrod: You won’t find any disagreement with me there!
@ Simo,
“Well what did those recent flying metal tubes damage? Nothing. Why should the world give any notice to them so long the occupation and siege continues? ”
You do remember that Hamas signed a seize fire with Israel, right? It also includes the tubes.
I see that Palestinians are only accountable for the end result – not the intention as the rest of us…
I would like to see you play the odds with your kids against the ‘flying metal tubes’… I’m sure you’ll run people over to get to shelter…
@ Scott,
This idiot was not elected by the people of Israel, she married one – but Richard’s coverage of the subject is disproportional – especially when there’s so much going on (the burnt church, the attack on the ambulance and the ‘flying tubes’ from Gaza).
@ Richard,
‘If Israeli F-16s & helicopter gunships wiped out 20 members of yr family with a single missile you’d be singing a far different tune.’
A dangerous statement that you won’t support if a jewish Israeli avenge is personal tragedy.
The missiles fired at Israel are part of a power struggle in the strip to gain public support that has nothing to do with Israel. It is a known tactic that Hamas used and now is used against it by more radical groups. The last time a missile was fired (~2 weeks ago) it was a warning to Hamas to free militants prisoners they had arrested (and tortured by the way) – they knew that Israel will hold them accountable (and rightly so as the ruling party). Israel knows this and that’s why the counterstrikes are very limited. But of course, when Israel will have enough of ‘flying metal’ or when the counterstrikes will kill someone – then you’ll wake up.
But of course it all pales in comparison with Judi’s tweets…
@Yonathan
“You do remember that Hamas signed a seize fire with Israel, right?”
Takes a lot of chutzpah to write a comment like that, Yonathan. (Actually it was a ceasefire) No matter what you call it, it was violated by Israel before the ink was dry, and over and over, every day, for months. With no response from Palestinian Resistance Forces. The Palestinians have never broken a ceasefire with Israel. Israel has broken every one.
Stop trolling for sympathy already. You like a fool. Haven’t you noticed? Nobody cares about your problems. If you’re looking for a shoulder to cry on, that’s what The Jewish Forward is for. So either engage with the subject matter, which in this case is the Interior Ministers wife, her racism, and the chronic case of foot-in-mouth disease that afflicts her, or go sell stupid somewhere else. Ya’ follow?
@ yonathan: Israel violates ceasefires at will & the list of Israeli violations is far longer than Gazan violations.
As for Mozes, this “idiot” is one of the richest & most powerful women in Israel. Sheldon Adelson is an “idiot” too. That doesn’t mean he’s not powerful & influential. To deny that Mozes has power & influence as 1/2 of Israel’s most visible power couple is ludicrous.
As for F-16s, if Palestine had them & used one to kill your family I’d like to see how eager you’d be to observe a ceasefire. As for the claim that rockets fired into Israel have nothing to do with Israel, that’s stupid & downright insulting. Israel occupies Gaza. Israel strangles Gaza. Israel has killed nearly 5,000 Gazans in the past decade or so. Of course rockets fired at Israel have everything to do with Israel.
Anytime the hasara brigade lets loose with a zinger like this you know it’s not only not “known” but practically invisible except to the hasbarati themselves.
And you want to complain about Hamas torturing prisoners?? Let’s first address the tactics of the Only Democracy in the Middle East which routinely tortures security prisoners and violates laws of due process and guarantee of counsel. But you don’t mind Israel behaving in this fashion since ‘democracy’ only applies to Jews, and that’s fine with you.
As for “holding accountable” Hamas, I’d like to see the world “hold accountable” Israel. That’s happening as I write this & will continue.
If you’re concerned truly (which I doubt) about the Jewish terror attack on the church, read my Mint Press story on this. Tonight I will post on the Druze attack as well.
So much about the black and nothing about the WEAK which was the real point of her message.
Under Obama presidency the US forgein policy became a joke. Syria and Yaman are the most current failures that cost human life every single days.
Yup, bomb them, and that will solve the problem, just as in Iraq.