Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's impending address to Congress has ignited a firestorm of controversy among the country's politicians and pundits, who are lambasting the move for corroding the strategic alliance with the United States.
US President Barack Obama indicated he won't attend the March 3rd address, citing the politically inappropriate proximity a mere two weeks before Israeli elections March 17. Vice President Joe Biden will also be a no-show, ostensibly due to scheduling conflicts.
Netanyahu aims to leverage the address for parallel purposes of rallying Congress against what he calls a "bad deal" with Iran, while boosting his security credentials in the run-up to the polls.
But politicians here are not hesitating to condemn Netanyahu for misjudging the political cost at home and in Washington as opposed to any benefit to his Iran strategy.
"The fact that the Vvice Ppresident will not attend the speech shows how Netanyahu is not concerned what is good for him and the country. We have a prime minister ... [who] finds the continued deterioration of Israeli-US relations hilarious," said Tzipi Livni, a former foreign minister who is now campaigning against Netanyahu as a leader of the center-left Zionist Union.
This incident is the latest of many perceived slights by Netanyahu against Obama and his overall foreign policy agenda. Politicians are calling on Netanyahu to cancel the Ccongressional speech.
At the Munich Security Conference, opposition leader Isaac Herzog said, "It's time for Bibi [Netanyahu] to announce the cancellation of his speech to Congress. This speech, which was born as part of a production for his electoral campaign, endangers the security of Israeli citizens and the special relationship between Israel and the United States."
Netanyahu must not exploit the relationship with the United States for partisan purposes and must, "act like an Israeli patriot and not throw the security of Israel under the wheels of the elections bus," Herzog added.
Michael Oren, fFormer Israeli Aambassador to the US,Michael Oren, who is now running in the newly formed center-right Koolanu party, offered a more measured reaction. "The Pprime Mminister is deeply committed to what he — and I — regard as the Iranian existential threat to Israel. It is incumbent on him to do his utmost to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear capabilities. That is not right, that is not left," Oren told a group of English-speaking voters at an open-house parlor meeting in Jerusalem.
Oren noted that Netanyahu had was also been invited to address the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, in Washington.
"If I was giving him advice, I'd say the more effective — or probably less problematic thing to do — would be to go to AIPAC, which will have thousands of people, plus most of Congress," he suggested.
Zehava Galon, head of the leftist Meretez pParty went a step further: On Thursday, she called on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to hold an emergency session to discuss preventing the speech from taking place.
"Consuls warned the Foreign Ministry that Netanyhu's speech will not only harm Israel's relations with the White House, but also US relations with the moderate Jewish community," she said.
The media, too, have jumped on the speech-cancellation bandwagon.
Peter Beinart, a US-based columnist for the daily Haaretz newspaper, penned a scathing piece against Netanyahu and his Aambassador to the US, Ron Dermer.
In the piece, he accuses both of being blindly arrogant and blames Dermer for having"secretly colluded with congressional Republicans to get Bibi invited to Congress so he can attack US President Barack Obama's Iran policy."
Netanyahu and his supporters on the right, meanwhile, are adamant that he must do everything within his power to combat the Iranian pursuit of a nuclear bomb, even if doing so temporarily harms ties with the US.
At his weekly cabinet address on Feb. 8Sunday, Netanyahu staunchly defended his position that raising the alarm over sealing a "bad" deal with Iran is his primary concern. "We will continue to take action and to lead the international effort against Iran's arming itself with nuclear weapons. We will do everything and will take any action to foil this bad and dangerous agreement that will place a heavy cloud over the future of the State of Israel and its security," he said.
The "Pprime Mminister's visit to Washington is intended for one purpose — to speak about Iran, that openly threatens the survival of the Jewish state. The survival of Israel is not a partisan issue. It is an issue for all Americans because those who seek Israel's destruction also threaten America," Dermer told The Atlantic, dismissing any partisan claims surrounding the purpose of the speech.
"There may be some people who believe that the prime minister of Israel should have declined this invitation to speak before the most powerful parliament in the world on an issue that concerns our survival and our future. But we have learned from our history that the world becomes a more dangerous place for the Jewish people when the Jewish people are silent," Dermer added.
Despite Dermer's attempt to downplay the tension between the two countries, however, those on the politcal Rright believe Israel and the US have very different agendas when it comes to the Iranian nuclear threat and that a serious rift between them does exist.
"The wholly artificial storm whipped up by the White House mereley illustrates once again Obama's sustained malice toward Israel, the invaluable bulwark of Western defenses in the Middle East, while he empowers Iran and other enemies of America and the free world," columnist Melanie Phillips wrote in The Jerusalem Post on Friday.
At this time, it seems unlikely that Netanyahu will cancel his appearance before Congress, despite the outcry and the threats by some Democrats to boycott the speech. Yet as the volume of voices urging him to reconsider amplifies, he may ultimately buckle down to pressure and find a way to gracefully bow out.
