…For the first time, the leader of Israel is an irrational actor, a danger not only to Israelis but also to important American interests and values.
This demands an immediate reassessment by both President Biden and the pro-Israel Jewish lobby in America. …
They wanted to trust him, and it all turned out to be a lie.
From Day 1, it has been obvious to many of us that this Israeli government would go to extremes that none before it ever dared. With no real guardrails, it would take the United States and world Jewry across redlines they never imagined crossing, while possibly destabilizing Jordan and the Abraham Accords, eliminating hope of a two-state solution and bringing Israel in its 75th anniversary year to the edge of civil war.
With the judiciary brought to heel, Israel would be governed more like elected autocracies, such as Hungary and Turkey, than the Israel the world has always known. And Netanyahu and his partners have pursued that kind of political control of the courts over and above any other priority they ran on, bringing the country to the brink of “civil war” — as Netanyahu admitted in his national address on Monday night.
… Netanyahu has become the definition of an irrational actor in international relations — someone whose behavior we can no longer predict and whose words President Biden should not trust. For starters, the U.S. needs to make sure Netanyahu does not use U.S. weapons to engage in any kind of war of choice with Iran or Hezbollah without the full and independent endorsement of Israel’s military high command, which has opposed his judicial putsch.
Why do I insist that Netanyahu has become an irrational actor and a danger to our interests and values? It’s a question that can be answered with a question:
How would you describe an Israeli prime minister and his son who, after 50 years of the United States sending Israel billions and billions of dollars in economic and military assistance, have been disseminating the lie that the U.S. government was behind the massive demonstrations against the prime minister — that this couldn’t possibly be an authentic grass-roots mainstream protest? It had to be U.S.-funded.
I am not making this up.
Yair Netanyahu, his father’s closest political adviser, last week shared conspiratorial tweets with his many Twitter followers on the Israeli right, The Jerusalem Post reported, like this one: “The American State Department is behind the protests in Israel, with the aim of overthrowing Netanyahu, apparently in order to conclude an agreement with the Iranians.”
I wonder where that came from? Well, two weeks ago, The Times of Israel reported that while Netanyahu the elder was on an official visit to Rome, a “senior official” in his traveling party (which everyone in the Milky Way galaxy knows is code for the prime minister himself) was quoted as saying (without a shred of evidence): “This protest is financed and organized with millions of dollars. … This is a very high-level organization.” The story continued: “Another member of the premier’s entourage confirmed that the senior official was referring to the United States.”
That Netanyahu and his son would turn on America with the same pathetic cynicism as Iran is shameful — and crazy. Neither man should be allowed into America until they apologize.
…
It is finally time that the American government, the American Congress and American Jewish leaders and lobbyists, who too often have been Netanyahu’s enablers, make it unmistakably clear that they are also marching with all those Israelis — from the military, the high-tech community, the universities, traditional religious communities, doctors, nurses, air force pilots, bankers, labor unions and even settlements — who took to the streets in the last week to ensure the 75th anniversary of Israeli democracy will not be its last.
