JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel indicated Thursday night that he was reconsidering his choice for public diplomacy chief after a furor over the nominee’s critiques of public officials, including a suggestion that President Obama was anti-Semitic and Secretary of State John Kerry had the intellect of a preteenager.
Mr. Netanyahu’s nominee, Ran Baratz, is a conservative academic who lives in a settlement in the occupied West Bank. Just last week, he insulted Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, in a Facebook post, and a decade ago he expressed his wish to see the building of a third Jewish temple on a contested Old City compound that has been a focal point of the recent wave of Palestinian attacks against Israeli Jews.
The prime minister’s office announced the selection of Mr. Baratz on Wednesday evening. Less than 24 hours later — after a barrage of public criticism from commentators and politicians, including two ministers from the prime minister’s own Likud party — Mr. Netanyahu indicated that he had belatedly discovered Mr. Baratz’s online postings and issued a statement saying they were “totally unacceptable and in no way reflect my positions or the policies of the government of Israel.”
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