APPARENTLY, THE PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL IS A REPUBLICAN

 

Speaker Boehner has disrespected the office of the president

 

And Netanyahu is losing a lot of support from the American public.

 

Anybody that thinks that the up-coming speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the joint session of US Congress is not a partisan Republican affair is smoking some pretty good stuff.

The rules of protocol state that speeches by foreign politicians to either House of the US Congress will not be held in close proximity to that politician's election, or re-election.  This is to avoid providing any individual a stage which could help promote them or their election’s outcome.  For this reason, the president and a number of Democrats are expected to avoid the Israeli Prime Minister’s speech as it is scheduled just two weeks before Israeli public heads to the polls.

It is well known that the Prime Minister and President Obama are not the best of friends.  Most political followers expect that since the Israeli election is expected to be a very close race, Netanyahu’s speech will probably attack the president as the PM delivers a campaign message to voters at home.

Some former GOP members of congress have said that all members of Congress should attend the speech because “the prime minister of Israel deserve to be listened to respectfully.”   Well, respect is important, but it is also a two-way street.  Speaker John Boehner has totally ignored normal diplomatic protocol by failing to previously inform the White House of the House invitation for Netanyahu to speak.  And Netanyahu knows the rules of politics in the United States.

“To think about going behind the back of a friendly country’s administration and working out this kind of arrangement with the parliament or the Congress, it’s unheard of,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel. This is an unprecedented lack of respect toward a U.S. president, and it has not gone unnoticed in Israel. Oudeh Basharat, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, has noted, “Greater respect is even accorded to banana republics.”

You may recall that the last time the Prime Minister spoke in the US at the United Nations in 2012, using a somewhat cartoon example of a nuclear bomb, he had stated that Iran was only 1 year from having the necessary enriched uranium to produce a bomb, that was obviously an incorrect statement.

The situation today between the President and the Prime Minister is very different from that of his last speech to the US Congress in 2011.  In that speech, he thanked President Obama for his “steadfast commitment to Israel’s security” and he told the world that “time is running out” on preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, a position which will obviously be repeated in this week’s speech.  Netanyahu also made videos of that speech that were used before his last successful election in Israel.

Videos taken from the floor of the House are not allowed in the US election campaigns, but apparently that is not the case in Israel.

Basharat recently wrote in his Israeli newspaper, “Any [previous] leader who tried to do to the Americans what Netanyahu has done would be ejected immediately, not from Washington, but from office in his home country.” 

Netanyahu is obviously expecting that this will not happen to him, and he feels that those in Israel that see the speech will just be more in support for his re-election.

I guess we Americans will just have to wait and see what the citizens of Israel decide. 

But I am hoping that there will be many empty seats when Netanyahu takes to the podium in the joint session of Congress.

 

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