Huffington Post Political Editor and White House Correspondent Sam Stein reported that during his phone call, to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Obama “let Netanyahu know that this [Netanyahu’s comment about Arab voters] was not acceptable if Israel wanted to continue to be this lone democracy in the Middle East” on Monday’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” on MSNBC.
Stein said that the president “was more critical about the Arab voters and the language that Netanyahu used there than he was about the dismissal of a two-state solution from Netanyahu in the days before the election. And I think the reason why is because that Arab voters comment touched a nerve for the president. Obviously, we’ve had, as a country, our own problem with racial histories and with voting issues with respect to racism, and I think when the preside heard that language, it resonated with him at a different way than the geopolitical stuff did, and he made it clear that in the phone call, he let Netanyahu know that this was not acceptable if Israel wanted to continue to be this lone democracy in the Middle East.”
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