The Netanyahu pantomime
Like a small earthquake, the effects of Netanyahu’s decision to accept a Republican Congressman’s invitation to go straight to Congress without passing the President’s office, coupled with its electioneering purpose and its hackneyed content (expressed in hyperbolic terms), rumble on.
This posting has these items:
1)Bloomberg: The speech didn’t boost him in the polls, but maybe the edited version will, David Weigel, a ‘tremendous own goal’ says a sympathiser;
2) Ex-Mossad chief Dagan pans Netanyahu’s ‘bulls—‘ speech to Congress, again, the retired generals form Israel’s most prestigious peace corps;
3) Haaretz: Liberal critics of Israel are emboldened by Netanyahu’s Congress speech, Nathan Guttman and the Forward team say the speech caused the anti-Israel malaise to ‘spread from the liberal wing of the party toward the center’;
4) Politicus: Bibi’s Speech To Congress Backfires As Netanyahu’s Popularity Crashes In US And Israel, not a left-wing body, so is Netanyahu in serious trouble?
5) The Hill: Dem: ‘My fears have been realized’, from Netanyahu speech
No no Bibi: Look behind you. Netanyahu gets the gallery to join in, US Congress March 3rd, 2015. Photo by Andrew Harnik/AP
Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress Makes it to Israeli Campaign Ads
The speech didn’t boost him in the polls, but maybe the edited version will.
By David Weigel, Bloomberg news
March 13, 2015
March 3, the day that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave his third speech to the U.S. Congress, had another significance back home. It was, as Daniel Gordis pointed out, the beginning of campaign ads for Israeli’s March 17 election. (Israel, like most democracies that lack a First Amendment and a court that has interpreted it to unleash political money, limits election spots to a window right before the vote.) Up to then, Netanyahu’s Likud Party had been bidding for virality with online videos that–among other things–warned against replacing him with opposition co-leader Tzipi Livni.
The impact of the speech has been that of a tremendous own goal, kicked right from the middle of the pitch.
The simulcast of the speech to Congress happened in Israeli prime time–free media with everyone from John Boehner to Elie Wiesel applauding Netanyahu’s plea to pre-emptively scotch a deal with Iran. A new ad, as first noted by Laura Goldman, finally converts the speech into a greatest-hits election tape.
This is surprising. The image of the speech was impressive. The impact of the speech has been that of a tremendous own goal, kicked right from the middle of the pitch. Since the speech, Netanyahu’s Likud had fallen slightly behind the Zionist union led by Livni and Isaac Herzog. The prime minister’s lost most of a lead he’d held over Herzog when voters were asked whom they preferred to see in the top job–something the speech to Congress was supposed to emphasize. In an interview Thursday, Livni felt comfortable enough about the backlash to the speech to say Netanyahu was boosting himself at Israel’s expense. “I believe we know how to work better with the international community to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” she told Gil Hoffman.
Livni and Herzog are benefitting from what turned out to be a sophisticated, far-sighted effort to undermine Netanyahu’s speech. Democrats saw an opportunity in Boehner’s opportunism. The speech was always understood as a Republican move to undermine the president’s negotiations. Democrats, as a rump of them peeled off and boycotted the speech, warned that Netanyahu’s willingness to be used made him a less effective voice. On Friday, Tennessee Representative Steve Cohen–who is Jewish– reacted to the new Likud ad by warning that the speech was always going to be an election gimmick, benefiting no one but Netanyahu.
“I predicted that Prime Minister Netanyahu would use this speech before Congress for political purposes,” said Cohen in a statement. “I had hoped this prediction might have had a chilling effect and caused the Prime Minister to reconsider before using Congress as a campaign backdrop. Instead, my fears have been realized.”
Ex-Mossad chief Dagan pans Netanyahu’s ‘bulls—‘ speech to Congress
By JPost staff
March 06, 2015
Meir Dagan, the former head of Mossad, eviscerated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress this past week.
In an interview with Channel 2 that aired on Friday evening, Dagan is seen watching the speech while using harsh, blunt language to describe some of the claims made by the premier before US lawmakers in Washington.
When Netanyahu said that Iran could sprint to a nuclear device in less than a year, Dagan said that the assessment was inaccurate. “It will take more time than that,” he said.
The former Mossad chief also ridiculed Netanyahu’s assertion that Iran posed a threat to the United States, even using the word “bullshit.”
Liberal critics of Israel are emboldened by Netanyahu’s Congress speech
The sense of malaise pro-Israel Democrats are experiencing has spread from the liberal wing of the party toward the center.
By The Forward and Nathan Guttman, Haaretz
March 12, 2015
Virginia Senator Tim Kaine is a longtime centrist Democrat from a purple state who has little in common with his party’s liberal wing. But Kaine found himself joining forces with progressives March 3 in boycotting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent speech to Congress.
Initially it was Netanyahu’s timing, just two weeks before elections in Israel, that angered Kaine, along with the way Israel’s Washington ambassador arranged the speech secretly with Republican congressional leaders — excluding the president and his fellow Democrats.
Kaine, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, saw Netanyahu’s congressional jeremiad against a potential deal with Iran to curb its nuclear program under these circumstances as a political stunt.
After the speech, Kaine, who in fact agreed with some of Netanyahu’s points, felt even more incensed.
“It was just an exercise to paint a straw man and knock it down,” he told the Forward in a March 10 interview. “My concern about the real purpose of the speech was sort of demonstrated by the speech itself.”
Kaine’s views on Netanyahu’s speech and on some of his policies illustrate how the sense of malaise pro-Israel Democrats are experiencing has spread from the liberal wing of the party toward the center, even among some who share the Israeli leader’s concerns about a potential nuclear deal with Iran.
Kaine is hardly an Israel scolder; even his dissatisfaction with recent events is couched in nuanced and cautious ways. That’s a far cry from some progressives in his own party who have increasingly pulled no punches in their criticism of the Israeli leader. One of them, Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, who is Jewish, went as far as calling on Israeli voters to oust Netanyahu.
Kaine, a former governor of Virginia who was considered by Barack Obama as a possible running mate in 2008, talked about a sense of sadness at the way Israel and the Republicans had treated pro-Israel Democrats like himself. “I think the behaviours we’ve seen in the last weeks make those of us who are pro-Israel Democrats feel like they are trying to push us away,” he said. He cited by name House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Israeli envoy Ron Dermer — and Netanyahu himself. Democrats, he added, “don’t like feeling like we’re being pushed aside when we’ve been strong supporters of Israel for a very long time.”
As the Netanyahu speech recedes in Washington’s rearview mirror, the longer-term damage the episode wreaked on the bipartisanship that had long characterized Congress on Israel remains unclear. The lingering feelings expressed by centrists like Kaine may not augur well. And the efforts by some liberal activists to, at the very least, pry support for Israel from its long-standing mandatory place on the liberal agenda may have gotten a boost.
Under different circumstances, Kaine, a member of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Near East and South and Central Asian Affairs, would have been an important ally for Netanyahu in Congress. He agrees with the Israeli leader’s concerns over Iran’s belligerence toward its neighbors, and agrees, too, on the safeguards necessary to ensure that Iran doesn’t cheat its way around the nuclear deal now being negotiated between itself and six other countries, including the United States. Kaine has also co-sponsored a bill requiring congressional involvement in any deal ultimately reached with Iran.
“The president cannot negotiate over the congressional sanctions regime and have an expectation that Congress will just stand back and not do anything on this issue,” Kaine said, defying a threat by President Obama to veto the bill. But the spat over Netanyahu’s speech has now clouded his view of the Israeli prime minister.
He also has “deep concerns” about Netanyahu’s decisions regarding the Palestinian conflict. “I worry that some of the activities vis-à-vis Palestine have weakened Israel’s future security, not strengthened it,” Kaine said. Once an integral part of any pro-Israel coalition, Democrats now face growing pressure to distance themselves from this cause. But there are differences.
The dissatisfaction of progressives on the left, as opposed to Kaine’s newly found disappointment with Netanyahu’s policies, has long been festering, often over Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians under its rule. The discontent on the liberal end broke out loudly and clearly following the March 3 speech to Congress, which served, some argue, as a watershed moment for progressive Democrats.
“Frustration has been building up for a while,” said Mik Moore, a political consultant who has been active in progressive causes, when describing the feeling among the liberal grassroots. “Netanyahu’s speech was a galvanizing moment. They see it as an embodiment of everything they feel is wrong with Israeli policy.”
Centrist Democrats, deeply involved in pro-Israel activity, agree with this diagnosis, but were more optimistic about making amends. “We have some repair work to do with people to the left of center,” said Rabbi Jack Moline, former head of the National Democratic Jewish Council and currently executive director of the Interfaith Alliance. He does not believe, however, that liberals are turning their back on Israel. Those who are, Moline argued, are “politically insignificant.”
The struggle over Israel between those on the left and the Jewish community’s pro-Israel institutions is evident on both sides of their growing divide. With increasing urgency, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the large, establishment Washington Israel lobby, is seeking out liberal activists to shore up its bipartisan bona fides. On the other side, Israel has become such an explosive issue that some liberal politicians will do anything to run away from dealing with it. Literally.
In a video that made waves on the Internet, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has emerged as liberals’ greatest political hope, was seen last July fleeing a reporter who was attempting to ask her about Israel’s actions during the 2014 Gaza war. Warren, an outspoken leader on the left’s domestic economic agenda, has said little about Israel since then. When mulling whether to attend Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, she waited until the last minute before announcing she would skip it.
Amid the sea of cheers that ultimately greeted the Israeli leader in Congress, it was easy to ignore the absence of Warren and the 55 other lawmakers who weren’t there. But the boycotters delineated, for the first time in Congress, the boundaries of support for Israel and defined themselves as a group willing to speak up against the prevailing consensus. The dissenters included many who had been associated with pro-Israel activity for years. At this stage, most observers say it’s unlikely that Washington lawmakers will take out their ire toward Israel’s government in congressional votes and speeches.
“They expressed what they felt, but I don’t see it having any hangover effect,” said Ann Lewis, a former adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton who has been involved in outreach efforts to the progressive community on AIPAC’s behalf. Consistent polling results over the past decade have shown that rank and file Democrats express markedly less sympathy for Israel than Democratic members of Congress, many of whom have longstanding connections to pro-Israel supporters who donate to their campaigns. The party itself is also highly reliant on Jewish pro-Israel donors and key activists in the Democratic camp.
Lewis said it is clear that when the next funding bill comes up to provide foreign aid to Israel, Kaine, Schakowsky and almost all their colleagues who sat out Netanyahu’s speech will vote in favour.
For progressive activists outside the beltway, the issue of Israel may be harder to resolve. Reconciling support for Israel and a liberal worldview has become increasingly difficult in the grassroots progressive environment.
Rabbi David Paskin of Temple Beth David in Florida says he is “conflicted” on Israel. “I’m very progressive on social and domestic issues,” Paskin said. “I want to be progressive, but it’s harder when it comes to Israel.” He does not always sense his continuing deep concerns over Israel’s security and wellbeing shared among fellow progressives.
On March 2, Paskin, who attended the AIPAC annual conference in Washington that coincided with Netanyahu’s speech, was among dozens at a packed closed-door session on pro-Israel outreach to progressives. There, the discussion quickly turned heated when former Democratic congressman Barney Frank (who is Ann Lewis’s brother) chided the lobby for not speaking out against Netanyahu’s visit and for avoiding any criticism of Israeli policies. According to two session participants, Frank argued that this reluctance causes pro-Israel activists to lose their credibility among progressives.
Tempers flared even more, they said, when Frank claimed that Israel and AIPAC had lobbied members of Congress a decade ago to support the war in Iraq. Similar arguments in the past have been hurled at the lobby by anti-war activists from the left and have always been vehemently denied. Frank, faced with vocal resistance from AIPAC members in the room, clarified that while calling for war was not the lobby’s official position, some of its top members advocated for it personally in their meetings with him and other members of Congress.
Efforts to contact Frank to ask about this exchange were unsuccessful.
The difficulty in reconciling liberal values and support for Israel has been on the mind of the Jewish community for years, and has only deepened since the collapse of the latest American attempt to broker a peace agreement and Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank drags on, with no end in sight amid repeated wars in Gaza take place with high civilian death rates.
AIPAC has responded by highlighting Israel’s liberal values, at least relative to the region, including civil rights, religious freedom and progress toward equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens living within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.
Faced with these pulls and counter-pulls, some Jewish activists have chosen instead to focus on the American domestic liberal agenda, leaving the issue of Israel for others.
One such group, Bend the Arc, held its first national fly-in March 10, with dozens of activists and donors descending on Washington for political meetings and lobbying. Warren was among those addressing the Jewish group, whose agenda includes racial equality and immigration and social justice but steers clear of any discussion of Israel or foreign policy.
Meanwhile, on the far left, activists have been watching events unfold with hope that the latest flap will help win over some of the struggling liberals and convince them to take a more critical stance on Israel.
“The idea of being progressive about everything except Palestine has become harder to maintain,” said Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, a group that supports boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. She said those on the left who support Israel live in a “cognitive dissonance,” which Netanyahu’s speech made even more evident. The partisan divide emerging over Israel, she claimed, can make it easier for Democrats to express dissenting views.
Still, up to now, most in the Jewish community view groups such as JVP as being outside the pale. Establishment Democrats argue that such a shift among elected officials, even those on the left, is unlikely to happen. Even at the height of the Netanyahu speech debate, it was easy to spot many Democrats attending AIPAC’s conference.
And even those who boycotted the speech opened their doors to AIPAC’s members when they came to lobby on Capitol Hill. Those members went to great lengths to stress that they remain supportive of Israel. Their specific target, they said, was Netanyahu.
“I don’t know a single senator who is not pro-Israel: Democrat or Republican,” Kaine said.
Most pro-Israel advocates would agree. But most also agree that this distinction between Israel and its elected leader is something new, with unknowable future implications.
Bibi’s Speech To Congress Backfires As Netanyahu’s Popularity Crashes In US And Israel
By Keith Brekhus, Politicus USA
March 11, 2015
Polls released in the United States and Israel on March 11, 2015 tell the same story in two different countries. Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress has backfired on the Israeli Prime Minister in a spectacular way. In the United States, a Gallup Poll, conducted from March 5-8, finds that Bibi’s popularity has dropped considerably since his address to Congress.
In February, a Gallup survey found 45 percent of Americans held a favorable view of Netanyahu, compared to 24 percent who viewed him unfavorably. After his speech to Congress, Netanyahu’s favorable rating dropped to 38 percent. His unfavorable numbers climbed to 29 percent. Overall, that represents a 12 percentage point decline in his favorable to unfavorable spread.
U.S. Republicans still have an overwhelmingly favorable image of Netanyahu, even after his warmongering speech before Congress. In fact, with Republicans, Bibi’s popularity rose slightly from a (60-17) to a (62-16) margin. However, Democrats were turned off by the bellicose speech, and by Bibi’s cozy relationship with Congressional Republicans. With Democrats, Netanyahu’s popularity cratered from neutral (32-32) in February, to overwhelmingly negative in March (17-46).
If Bibi and Congressional Republicans had planned his speech to win over support from Americans, the propaganda ploy flopped badly. While he gained an incremental 3-point jump in popularity from Republicans, the trade-off was losing a net 29 points in his approval rating from Democrats.
Cartoon by Nick Anderson
As a re-election ploy back home, the gambit also appears to have failed. 35,000 Israeli citizens took to the streets of Tel Aviv, in an “Israel wants change” public protest against Netanyahu after his address to the U.S. Congress. While large public protests do not always signify that a political leader is in jeopardy, a series of recent polls find Netanyahu losing support as well.
Bibi’s right-leaning Likud Party, which was deadlocked with Isaac Herzog’s center-left Zionist Union Party in February polls, is now losing ground. An Israel Army radio poll projects Herzog’s slate to win 24 seats in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) to Likud’s 21 seats. A Channel 2 poll conducted on Tuesday put the totals as 25 to 21 in favor of the Zionist Union over Likud. The polls both show Bibi’s support declining from his February numbers.
Because the Knesset contains 120 total seats, Netanyahu’s Party could still cobble together a ruling coalition even if they garner fewer votes than the Zionist Union. However, Bibi’s dwindling popularity opens the possibility that he will be defeated at the polls, and possibly even ousted as Israel’s Prime Minister.
When Congressional Republicans bypassed the President of the United States to have Bibi speak before the Congress, they believed they had crafted an ingenious plan to weaken the President and to boost Netanyahu’s image in the U.S. and in Israel. Although Republicans gushed and fawned over the Israeli Prime Minister’s hawkish speech, the address didn’t go over well with most Americans, or with the people back home in Israel.
The foreign policy amateurs in the GOP, and their bellicose hero, Prime Minister Netanyahu, may have enjoyed their childish political theater. However, for Americans and Israelis who want their leaders to take security seriously, the Bibi traveling road show flopped. Netanyahu’s poll numbers in both the U.S. and Israel demonstrate how poorly the speech was received by the general public. There can be no question that it backfired. The only question that remains is if the backlash will be strong enough to remove Bibi from office altogether. For the sake of peace in the Middle East, let’s hope so.
Dem: ‘My fears have been realized’ from Netanyahu speech
By Cristina Marcos, The Hill
March 12, 2015
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said his suspicions that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would use his address to Congress last week to bolster his own reelection campaign have come true.
The Israeli Likud Party, which Netanyahu leads, released a campaign advertisement Thursday that includes footage from Netanyahu’s speech to Congress last week. Members of Congress are shown applauding as Netanyahu speaks at the House dais.
Cohen, who is Jewish, was among the more than 50 Democrats who skipped Netanyahu’s speech. The Tennessee Democrat said he suspected Netanyahu would use the footage for campaign ads ahead of the Israeli elections next week, given that he had done so in the past.
“I had hoped this prediction might have had a chilling effect and caused the prime minister to reconsider before using Congress as a campaign backdrop. Instead, my fears have been realized,” Cohen said in a statement.
Cohen noted that members of Congress are banned from using congressional proceedings for their own campaign ads, arguing a foreign leader should be held to the same standard.
“The use of Congressional proceedings in campaign ads is prohibited for members of Congress, and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s predictable use of this footage is one of several reasons I did not attend his speech. I am saddened that Congress is once again being turned into theater and that the prime minister made our Capitol into a studio for his political ads, complete with teleprompters and a live studio audience,” Cohen concluded.
Netanyahu denied that his speech was meant to bolster his re-election prospects in Israel. The prime minister focused on criticizing the international negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program during his remarks, but addressed the controversial nature of his appearance shortly after stepping up to the microphone.
“I know that my speech has been the subject of much controversy. I deeply regret that some perceive my being here as political. That was never my intention,” [sic] Netanyahu said.