Were Americans listening to Netanyahu’s message?
What Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his address to a joint meeting of Congress was important.
Jonathan S. Tobin/JNS
Both Americans and Israelis need to understand that the war in the Gaza Strip is just one front in a conflict with Iran that is, as he rightly said, a battle “between civilization and barbarism.” He gave the best possible argument for Americans to understand that Iran’s fomenting of terrorist wars across the Middle East was a threat to their security. The speech was also a brilliant defence not only of the justness of Israel’s war policy and tactics but of the Jewish people’s right to live in peace, security and sovereignty in their ancient homeland.
Far more vital than what he said is whether enough people who matter are prepared to listen to that message and draw the appropriate conclusions. And, much like the outcome of the November election that will have a major impact on the future of U.S.-Israel relations, the answer to that question is yet to be decided.
That’s not just because there were many prominent members of the House and Senate who chose to boycott the speech or the presence of angry mobs of pro-Hamas antisemitic protesters as he spoke. Rather, it is because those who have hurled libellous charges at Israel since it was attacked on Oct. 7 as well as those—in the Biden administration, the media, pop culture and college administrators—who have feared to confront or offend them, don’t understand that they are illustrating America’s most crucial problem as much as their incomprehension of events in the Middle East.
The real argument
In this war “between civilization and barbarism,” those who spread the toxic woke ideologies of critical race theory and intersectionality essentially give aid and comfort to the latter. It’s important to realize that the debate among Americans about Israel isn’t really about its military tactics or the advisability of a ceasefire agreement or even if they comprehend the threat from Iran, key as those topics may be.
The argument is really about whether the lies about the one Jewish state on the planet being an “apartheid” state composed of “white” oppressors of people of colour will be accepted by the American people. It is those fashionable ideas that have conquered the U.S. education system, as well as much else throughout its culture, media and government that are behind the mobs in the streets tearing down American flags, and waving those of the Palestinians and Hamas. And it is the influence of those who embrace these radical sentiments and their enablers that have created the resistance within the Biden administration to Netanyahu’s war goals.
Timely reminders
Netanyahu had some clear political objectives in coming to America.
He was eager to take advantage of the opportunity afforded him by the decision of House Republicans to invite him and then pressure a reluctant Democratic majority in the Senate to go along. At no point since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks has he had the chance to directly address the American people to explain to them the situation Israel is facing and what it hopes to accomplish without the filter of a biased corporate mainstream media.
In doing so, he reminded Americans of the horrors of Oct. 7 that have largely been forgotten in the discourse about the subsequent war that followed and the stakes for Israel in a conflict with an organization like Hamas, whose goals are Israel’s destruction and the genocide of the Jews. He also directly addressed and refuted the false charges about Israel inflicting disproportionate casualties on Palestinian civilians or causing a famine there. Both claims are nothing more than Hamas propaganda talking points that have been endlessly repeated by the liberal press and accepted by the political left as truth.
The main point of the speech, however, was to reinforce support for Israel’s efforts by pointing out that Hamas’s assault was just one of a multi-front war being waged against the Jewish state and the West by Iran. He wanted it understood that the demonstrators chanting for Israel’s extinction (“from the river to the sea”) and for terrorism against Jews are doing the bidding of Tehran, therefore serving as “Iran’s useful idiots.”
The address earned him numerous standing ovations from both Republicans and Democrats who were present and doubtless played well to the national audience that tuned in to C-SPAN and the cable news networks that ran it live.
It also should have done him some good at home. The spectacle of Netanyahu getting another hero’s welcome by Congress and making a record fourth such address (the most ever for a foreign leader) should send the message to the voters that will ultimately decide his fate that the prime minister hasn’t lost his talent for speaking to Americans in unaccented English in a way that no other Israeli politician can.
The image Harris fears
But the fact that so many of those who should have been there stayed away can’t be brushed off by the cheers for his rhetorical excellence.
The most prominent of the boycotters was Vice President Kamala Harris, who chose to prioritize a campaign appearance speaking to a college sorority in Indiana. The political motivation of Harris, who nevertheless scheduled a private meeting with the prime minister for the day after his speech, was obvious.
She was desperate to avoid being seen on television and in photos published afterwards sitting behind Netanyahu as he spoke and, as she would have been obligated to do, joining in the standing ovations for his appeals to the common interests of the two allies and denunciations of their Islamist foes. Such images would have been political poison to a presidential candidate hoping to avoid the pro-Hamas mobs turning on her the way they have Biden and ludicrously labelling her “genocide Kamala.” Her goal now is uniting all Democrats, including the antisemitic left, behind her and avoiding the same sort of chaos outside of the Democratic National Convention next month, where she will be coronated as their nominee, as there was on the streets of Washington during Netanyahu’s address.
That she and then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (who also boycotted Netanyahu’s speech) had no qualms about appearing behind Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy when he addressed Congress in December 2022 and even held up one of his country’s flags, speaks volumes about which cause their party views as the most important.
All in all, about half of the Democratic caucuses in both the House and Senate stayed away, illustrating that the members of the Progressive Caucus—as opposed to the even more radical House “Squad”—in both bodies make up roughly half of those representing the party. Even some of those who did show up, such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, did so only after saying that they attended grudgingly.
It should also be noted that the only Senate Republican who wasn’t there was Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who was tapped to be his party’s vice-presidential nominee last week. Vance is an ardent supporter of Israel and his vote against the aid package to Israel that was passed was not in opposition to the Jewish state but to the administration’s insistence on tying it to the far larger allocations to Ukraine that he opposes. Now that he is running on a national ticket, his time is not his own, and he must go where the Trump campaign tells him to be—meaning he will be spending precious little time in the Senate until November. But his absence was still an unforced error that will be thrown in the face of his party’s advocates throughout the campaign.
The fact that so many Democrats stayed away is an indication not so much of the way Democrats resenting his opposition to the Obama administration’s appeasement of Iran—the focus of his congressional address in 2015—or that they see him as an ally of former President Donald Trump and the GOP, though those are certainly factors. It’s that the base of their party, the activists and congressional staffers (some of whom staged their own walkout to demonstrate their antipathy to Netanyahu) is under the spell of those same toxic ideologies embraced by the protesters that make them believe that Israel is inherently in the wrong in this conflict.
The future of the alliance
The ability of Netanyahu to rally those at the Capitol to the cause of Israel in such a rousing fashion is partially a tribute to his personal abilities. It is also due to the fact that most Americans remain strong supporters of the Jewish state, albeit the numbers reflect a deep partisan divide with the minority opposing it being overwhelming Democrats. That this is so even after nearly 10 months of nonstop incitement and biased reporting by the liberal media that have often acted as Hamas’s stenographers is a reflection of the way support for Zionism is baked deep into the political DNA of the United States rather than due to opinion about individuals or events.
Still, the cheers from those who were there should not be seen erasing the problems Israel currently faces in the United States.
In evaluating the impact of this visit, both the American pro-Israel community and Israelis need to understand that the anger expressed at the prime minister in the streets, the boycotts and the cool reception he’ll get from the administration is not so much about him. Nor is it really linked to the desire of some Israelis for a ceasefire deal that would free at least some of the estimated 120 hostages (some already confirmed dead) still being held by Hamas, despite the desperate claims of the families of those who were kidnapped by the terrorists rather than Israel continuing the fight until Hamas no longer has the capacity to continue fighting.
Nor is the issue of whether Americans will embrace Netanyahu’s vision of a postwar Gaza that is run by Palestinians who don’t want to destroy Israel, a demographic slice of the population that is currently so small that it must render the idea more of a fantasy than a pragmatic plan. His idea for a “NATO-style” regional “Abraham alliance” also isn’t likely to interest either major party, since Democrats don’t like Israel’s Arab allies and many GOP supporters of Israel would prefer the Jewish state and its regional friends take on Iran without further involving American forces.
The reason why Israel has become a partisan issue with the overwhelming majority of Republicans backing it and the Democrats split on it isn’t about Netanyahu, Trump or specific accusations about the conduct of the war. Rather, it is that more and more of those Americans who identify with the Democrats have bought into the false assumptions about the Middle East conflict being an extension of racial strife in the United States.
The future of the U.S.-Israel alliance won’t be decided by speeches, even ones as good as the one Netanyahu delivered. If Israel is to retain the support of the United States in the years to come, it will only happen if the woke tide driving the libels about the war and Zionism is rolled back by Americans who are fed up with their institutions being captured by radicals.
That Harris fears running afoul of such sentiments speaks volumes about the problems facing supporters of Israel now and in the future. It also demonstrates that the outcome of the battle for Western civilization—to which Netanyahu rightly tied his country’s fortunes—will be deeply influenced by the decisions that will be made by American voters.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him @jonathans_tobin.
