海角大神

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu鈥檚 decision to accept an invitation to address a Joint Session of Congress in March, just two weeks before Israel鈥檚 upcoming elections, has led to a rather open wound both between the White House and Congress and between the Obama administration and Israel itself. When the speech was first announced last week, the White House criticized Congress for not consulting with the administration prior to issuing the invitation, which is typically how these maters are handled, especially given the fact that such an appearance by Netanyahu so close to a contested election could be seen as interference in the election itself. Yesterday,聽those complaints became public and drew the Israeli ambassador to the United States into the fray:

This isn鈥檛 the first indication of strained relations between the Obama administration and Mr. Netanyahu, of course. Virtually from the start of the Obama administration, there have been signs both public and private that the two men don鈥檛 exactly get along and that they have fundamentally different ideas about how to proceed on a whole range of issues, not the least of them being the issue of the Iranian nuclear program. It鈥檚 also fairly clear that Republicans in Congress have been using the US relationship with Israel as a needle to poke President Obama with for years now, and that this invitation, which is clearly designed to influence debate on a piece of legislation that the White House has said that it opposes and would likely veto if it ever got to the president鈥檚 desk, is designed to poke even further at that wound. What that鈥檚 exactly intended to accomplish, of course, is another issue. Poisoning the well of 聽the US-Israeli relationship hardly seems like a productive endeavor, for example, and yet it seems clear that this is pretty much all that a move like this on Congress鈥檚 part is going to accomplish. Additionally, the invitation plays into the long-standard Republican claim that the Obama administration鈥檚 policies, both regarding Iran and regarding the Palestinian issue, have been openly anti-Israeli, a claim that resonates well with the base of the Republican Party.

Interestingly,聽this entire kerfuffle is also having an impact in Israel, where Prime Minister Netanyahu is being heavily criticized for taking steps that seem only to be harming his country鈥檚 most important diplomatic relationship:

I am not nearly familiar enough with Israeli politics to even begin to comment on whether or not Netanyahu may be vulnerable in the upcoming elections, or the extent to which these latest moves on his part will end up harming him politically. However, it does seem as though the prime minister is, at least, creating the impression at home that he is allowing himself to be drawn into a political dispute between the Republicans in Congress and the president in a way that a foreign leader ought to be careful to avoid. In general, support for Israel has always been a bipartisan issue in the United States but, in recent years, the GOP has attempted to turn support for Israel into a partisan issue, in no small part by attempting to define it as being equal to support for the agenda that Netanyahu advocates. With alarming regularity, anyone who seems to question that agenda has been labeled as 鈥渁nti-Israeli,鈥� or, worse, anti-Semitic, if they dare to express an opinion that diverges from what the current Israeli government advocates. According to this version of reality, the Obama administration has been blatantly opposed to Israel, notwithstanding the fact that the 聽public stance of the United States on every major issue affecting Israel remains unchanged under this president.

Additionally, even if these latest developments don鈥檛 end up harming Netanyahu in the upcoming elections, it鈥檚 hard to see how he is helping the long-term interests of his country by becoming involved so openly in a partisan political dispute in Washington. Given the fact that he spent much of his early life in the United States, Netanyahu is no doubt well aware of the way politics works in America. It鈥檚 therefore hard to believe that he doesn鈥檛 see how accepting this invitation from Congress will be seen as nothing more than a partisan thumb in the eye of the president of the United States, while at the same time, tying his nation to the political fortunes of the Republican Party going forward. Since it鈥檚聽equally likely that the next president will come from the Democratic Party, one has to wonder how he thinks making the US-Israeli relationship so heavily partisan is at all in his country鈥檚 interest.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.