Brent D. Griffiths
Mon, July 24, 2023
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to mayors from across the country during an event at the East Room of the White House on January 20, 2023 in Washington, DC. President Biden hosted mayors who are attending the U.S. Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting at the White House to discuss bipartisan achievements.
Alex Wong/Getty ImagesMore
The White House expressed concern after Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition jammed through judicial reforms.
Biden has made it repeatedly clear that he wants Israel to reach a consensus on an issue that has led to an uproar.
The Netanyahu-backed reforms passed after a three-month pause failed to yield a compromise.
The White House on Monday condemned Israel parliament for passing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's preferred sweeping judicial reforms that sparked protests throughout the country, a further sign of how President Joe Biden is trying to exert his own influence from afar.
"It is unfortunate that the vote today took place with the slimmest possible majority," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
Jean-Pierre stressed that Biden remains a "lifelong friend of Israel," but it made it clear that the White House is not backing down from its months of nudging Netanyahu to cool his push for reforms amid public outrage.
"As a lifelong friend of Israel, President Biden has publicly and privately expressed his views that major changes in a democracy to be enduring must have as broad a consensus as possible," she said in the statement.
The White House's newest statement won't come as a surprise. Biden reiterated his views to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman ahead of the vote.
Netanyahu's coalition unanimously passed the reforms that would limit the Supreme Court's authority after the opposition parties walked out in protest. Protestors tried to block roads leading to parliament in a final vein attempt before the vote took place.
Israel's justice minister Yariv Levin and other right-wing leaders have viewed the proposal as a necessary way to rein in judges that they view as having asserted too much power. While critics have pointed out that Netanyahu is pursuing a way to weaken Israel's judiciary at the same time he faces an ongoing corruption trial.
The fierce reaction to Netanyahu's plan has led to an increasingly tumultuous moment. According to The Times, more than 10,000 military reservists are threatening to resign. Israel's largest labor union is considering a call for a national strike.
Netanyahu previously paused his push for an overhaul for three months after an earlier public outcry. He and the opposition were unable to reach a deal, leading to Monday's vote.
The tensions between Biden and Netanyahu come at a time when progressive lawmakers are increasingly skeptical over Israel's rightward push. The disagreements over how to approach the US ally served as a backdrop to Israeli President Isaac Herzog's address to Congress, which a handful of Democratic lawmakers opted to boycott.
Business Insider
The White House expressed concern after Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition jammed through judicial reforms.
Biden has made it repeatedly clear that he wants Israel to reach a consensus on an issue that has led to an uproar.
The Netanyahu-backed reforms passed after a three-month pause failed to yield a compromise.
The White House on Monday condemned Israel parliament for passing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's preferred sweeping judicial reforms that sparked protests throughout the country, a further sign of how President Joe Biden is trying to exert his own influence from afar.
"It is unfortunate that the vote today took place with the slimmest possible majority," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
Jean-Pierre stressed that Biden remains a "lifelong friend of Israel," but it made it clear that the White House is not backing down from its months of nudging Netanyahu to cool his push for reforms amid public outrage.
"As a lifelong friend of Israel, President Biden has publicly and privately expressed his views that major changes in a democracy to be enduring must have as broad a consensus as possible," she said in the statement.
The White House's newest statement won't come as a surprise. Biden reiterated his views to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman ahead of the vote.
Netanyahu's coalition unanimously passed the reforms that would limit the Supreme Court's authority after the opposition parties walked out in protest. Protestors tried to block roads leading to parliament in a final vein attempt before the vote took place.
Israel's justice minister Yariv Levin and other right-wing leaders have viewed the proposal as a necessary way to rein in judges that they view as having asserted too much power. While critics have pointed out that Netanyahu is pursuing a way to weaken Israel's judiciary at the same time he faces an ongoing corruption trial.
The fierce reaction to Netanyahu's plan has led to an increasingly tumultuous moment. According to The Times, more than 10,000 military reservists are threatening to resign. Israel's largest labor union is considering a call for a national strike.
Netanyahu previously paused his push for an overhaul for three months after an earlier public outcry. He and the opposition were unable to reach a deal, leading to Monday's vote.
The tensions between Biden and Netanyahu come at a time when progressive lawmakers are increasingly skeptical over Israel's rightward push. The disagreements over how to approach the US ally served as a backdrop to Israeli President Isaac Herzog's address to Congress, which a handful of Democratic lawmakers opted to boycott.
Business Insider
This Is the End of the U.S.-Israel ‘Special Relationship’
David Rothkopf
Mon, July 24, 2023
Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / Getty
America’s special relationship with Israel has, for the foreseeable future, come to an end.
Many will deny this. Many will hope it is not so. But the damage that has been done cannot be easily undone. A relationship built on shared values cannot be easily restored once it is clear those values are no longer shared.
For years, Israel made the case that it was America’s essential ally in the Middle East because it was the only state in the region that was a democracy—not a theocracy or an autocracy like all its neighbors.
Why Pramila Jayapal Was Right to Call Israel a ‘Racist State’
That is no longer the case.
While most of the blame for this turn of events must go to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing coalition of Jewish nationalists, some falls on America’s leaders who, to varying degrees, for years refused to acknowledge Israel’s drift toward authoritarianism or, for that matter, its serial abuses of millions of the people who lived within the borders it controlled.
As recently as a week ago, only nine people in the U.S. Congress dared stand up to the lie that Israel was not a racist state. This despite decades of denying fundamental human rights to Palestinians in territories over which it asserted power simply because they were Palestinian.
The chorus of American leaders who regularly promised Israel’s leaders we would be with them (no matter what they did) invited Netanyahu and the thugocracy he assembled around him to do their worst. The Israeli leaders knew there was no price to pay. They knew that American aid would keep on coming. They knew American leaders would apologize for or cover up their crimes, block the U.N. from taking action against them, and maintain the myth that they were democratic when becoming less and less so.
A demonstrator wearing a mask depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu takes part in a sit-in to block the entrance of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem on July 24, 2023.
Menahem Kahana / Getty
It is, of course, galling and revealing that it took the most baldfaced assault on the democratic rights of Jewish Israelis ever to get awareness of the decay within the Israeli polity to the level it is today.
Part of that is due to the natural and warranted support that has long existed for Israel due to its origins as a refuge for Jews escaping the horrors of the Holocaust, and seeking a homeland from which they could control their own destiny. Part of this is due to the fact that Israel was created to be a democracy, built around ideals much like those on which the U.S. was founded. Part of this is due to the fact that Israel was a valued ally during the Cold War, a potent counterforce to Soviet friends in a vital region of the world.
I Was Canceled for Criticizing Israel
We must also acknowledge that part of the support for Israel was due to the political influence of its supporters among the American electorate, from Zionist Jews to evangelical Christians. Some among these supporters have been particularly effective in making any wavering of support by political leaders seem toxic. This was accomplished via multiple means, but among these were the establishment of bright red lines, such as the argument that failing to support the government of Israel’s ethno-nationalist policies was tantamount to antisemitism.
Politicians in both U.S. parties therefore failed to offer sufficient criticism to Netanyahu as he bulldozed Palestinian settlements or changed Israel’s laws to shift the country in a more theocratic direction.
Even when Netanyahu, frustrated that his support from Democrats was not enthusiastic enough, became overtly partisan—embracing the GOP and, in particular, the MAGA GOP—this continued. Those who criticized Israel were ostracized and condemned. Trump offered Bibi a blank check and in exchange was offered a subway station and a settlement named after him.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Kobi Gideon / Getty
In recent months, as Netanyahu sought to change Israel’s laws to eviscerate the power and independence of its Supreme Court, while the Biden administration offered stronger and stronger words to warn the Israeli government away from such action, no major changes were made in U.S. plans to continue to provide billions of dollars of military and other forms of aid to Israel. Promises from Netanyahu that (to Israeli observers) were clearly lies were accepted.
Meet Israel’s Version of Marjorie Taylor Greene
More recently, this tolerance of outrageous behavior was seen to fray further when—in the wake of outright lies by Netanyahu about the nature of Biden’s support for him—the U.S. president took the extraordinary step of reaching out to New York Times columnist Tom Friedman to help him communicate the truth of what he had said to the Israeli prime minister, so that Bibi could no longer continue to twist Biden’s words as he had been doing.
But with the passage of the first part of Netanyahu’s plan to strip away the powers of the Israeli Supreme Court, it must be clear that the lies were lies, that the intent is undeniably anti-democratic, that we no longer share the values we once celebrated with Israel, and that the relationship must be reassessed.
Strikingly, some stalwart supporters of the traditional U.S.-Israel relationship, like former U.S. ambassadors to Israel Martin Indyk and Daniel Kurtzer, have said what was previously unthinkable: That the U.S. must consider stopping the provision of military aid to Israel.
They are right. We must consider it. We must, as Tom Friedman has argued in The Times, must use our special history with Israel in support of democracy in that country.
But we need to recognize that Israeli politics have changed, and that while hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to protest the actions of the Netanyahu coalition, the damage that has already been done is likely to be compounded. More aggressive actions to settle the occupied territories using force are likely to follow. More blows against Israeli democracy are likely to follow. Even if the protests gain further momentum, divisions within Israeli politics are likely to remain for a long time to come.
America’s leaders must recognize that the policy of biting their tongues when Israel’s government brutalizes Palestinians‚ or when it has telegraphed its coming attacks on its own democracy—has been a failure.
Stronger steps were called for earlier. Stronger steps are called for now.
Aid to Israel cannot be a blank check. It must be driven by U.S. interests. And currently, the Netanyahu government (which also sat on the fence when the U.S. called for support in Ukraine) is not acting in those interests.
Shockingly, one senior U.S. government official said to me recently that as the U.S. pursued normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, it was the Israeli government rather than that of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (also known as MBS—a leader with whom they have had bad blood), that was proving the more difficult with which to deal.
U.S. political leaders must finally tune out the specious argument that opposing the actions of a racist Israeli government contemptuous of international law and fundamental human rights is somehow antisemitic. No one is doing more damage to the legitimacy of the state of Israel than the current Israeli government. No one is a greater threat to the state of Israel than Netanyahu and his coalition.
The only way to revive the “special relationship” is to establish that the U.S. and Israel are actually bound together by genuinely shared values. We must be clear about what that means and about the concrete costs of failing to re-establish those values as guiding principles of the Israeli government.
We must also recognize that it means protecting the rights not only of Israeli Jews but of Palestinians, as well, of making democracy and the transparent rule of law available to all who live within the borders—not just of the state of Israel but of the territories over which it exerts its authority. Because giving the Israeli government license to abuse the rights of Palestinians is part of what sent the message that we would tolerate the other abuses they have subsequently committed.
We must also recognize that Netanyahu hopes (and perhaps believes) that he can restore the special relationship by waiting for Donald Trump to be reelected. He knows that a Trump administration would not only be as contemptuous of democracy as he is, but it would be seeking to implement similar policies, in part because Trump (like Netanyahu) shares the desire to use power as a way of avoiding jail time for past crimes.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives for a hearing at the Magistrate's Court in Rishon Lezion on January 23, 2023.
Abir Sultan / Getty
Of course, the consequence of a restoration of ties based on the further debasement of the principles on which both governments were once founded would mean something much worse than the end of an international relationship. It would mean a devastating blow to democracy and the rule of law worldwide. It would be a catastrophe for both nations and the planet.
We have come to this dangerous moment by failing to acknowledge and actively work to stop the enemies of our values, our standing, and our security. Given the stakes and the precariousness of the current situation in both countries, we must use every legal lever available at our disposal to undo the damage that has already been done and to stop further erosion at the foundations of our societies.
The Daily Beast.
David Rothkopf
Mon, July 24, 2023
Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / Getty
America’s special relationship with Israel has, for the foreseeable future, come to an end.
Many will deny this. Many will hope it is not so. But the damage that has been done cannot be easily undone. A relationship built on shared values cannot be easily restored once it is clear those values are no longer shared.
For years, Israel made the case that it was America’s essential ally in the Middle East because it was the only state in the region that was a democracy—not a theocracy or an autocracy like all its neighbors.
Why Pramila Jayapal Was Right to Call Israel a ‘Racist State’
That is no longer the case.
While most of the blame for this turn of events must go to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing coalition of Jewish nationalists, some falls on America’s leaders who, to varying degrees, for years refused to acknowledge Israel’s drift toward authoritarianism or, for that matter, its serial abuses of millions of the people who lived within the borders it controlled.
As recently as a week ago, only nine people in the U.S. Congress dared stand up to the lie that Israel was not a racist state. This despite decades of denying fundamental human rights to Palestinians in territories over which it asserted power simply because they were Palestinian.
The chorus of American leaders who regularly promised Israel’s leaders we would be with them (no matter what they did) invited Netanyahu and the thugocracy he assembled around him to do their worst. The Israeli leaders knew there was no price to pay. They knew that American aid would keep on coming. They knew American leaders would apologize for or cover up their crimes, block the U.N. from taking action against them, and maintain the myth that they were democratic when becoming less and less so.
A demonstrator wearing a mask depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu takes part in a sit-in to block the entrance of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem on July 24, 2023.
Menahem Kahana / Getty
It is, of course, galling and revealing that it took the most baldfaced assault on the democratic rights of Jewish Israelis ever to get awareness of the decay within the Israeli polity to the level it is today.
Part of that is due to the natural and warranted support that has long existed for Israel due to its origins as a refuge for Jews escaping the horrors of the Holocaust, and seeking a homeland from which they could control their own destiny. Part of this is due to the fact that Israel was created to be a democracy, built around ideals much like those on which the U.S. was founded. Part of this is due to the fact that Israel was a valued ally during the Cold War, a potent counterforce to Soviet friends in a vital region of the world.
I Was Canceled for Criticizing Israel
We must also acknowledge that part of the support for Israel was due to the political influence of its supporters among the American electorate, from Zionist Jews to evangelical Christians. Some among these supporters have been particularly effective in making any wavering of support by political leaders seem toxic. This was accomplished via multiple means, but among these were the establishment of bright red lines, such as the argument that failing to support the government of Israel’s ethno-nationalist policies was tantamount to antisemitism.
Politicians in both U.S. parties therefore failed to offer sufficient criticism to Netanyahu as he bulldozed Palestinian settlements or changed Israel’s laws to shift the country in a more theocratic direction.
Even when Netanyahu, frustrated that his support from Democrats was not enthusiastic enough, became overtly partisan—embracing the GOP and, in particular, the MAGA GOP—this continued. Those who criticized Israel were ostracized and condemned. Trump offered Bibi a blank check and in exchange was offered a subway station and a settlement named after him.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Kobi Gideon / Getty
In recent months, as Netanyahu sought to change Israel’s laws to eviscerate the power and independence of its Supreme Court, while the Biden administration offered stronger and stronger words to warn the Israeli government away from such action, no major changes were made in U.S. plans to continue to provide billions of dollars of military and other forms of aid to Israel. Promises from Netanyahu that (to Israeli observers) were clearly lies were accepted.
Meet Israel’s Version of Marjorie Taylor Greene
More recently, this tolerance of outrageous behavior was seen to fray further when—in the wake of outright lies by Netanyahu about the nature of Biden’s support for him—the U.S. president took the extraordinary step of reaching out to New York Times columnist Tom Friedman to help him communicate the truth of what he had said to the Israeli prime minister, so that Bibi could no longer continue to twist Biden’s words as he had been doing.
But with the passage of the first part of Netanyahu’s plan to strip away the powers of the Israeli Supreme Court, it must be clear that the lies were lies, that the intent is undeniably anti-democratic, that we no longer share the values we once celebrated with Israel, and that the relationship must be reassessed.
Strikingly, some stalwart supporters of the traditional U.S.-Israel relationship, like former U.S. ambassadors to Israel Martin Indyk and Daniel Kurtzer, have said what was previously unthinkable: That the U.S. must consider stopping the provision of military aid to Israel.
They are right. We must consider it. We must, as Tom Friedman has argued in The Times, must use our special history with Israel in support of democracy in that country.
But we need to recognize that Israeli politics have changed, and that while hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to protest the actions of the Netanyahu coalition, the damage that has already been done is likely to be compounded. More aggressive actions to settle the occupied territories using force are likely to follow. More blows against Israeli democracy are likely to follow. Even if the protests gain further momentum, divisions within Israeli politics are likely to remain for a long time to come.
America’s leaders must recognize that the policy of biting their tongues when Israel’s government brutalizes Palestinians‚ or when it has telegraphed its coming attacks on its own democracy—has been a failure.
Stronger steps were called for earlier. Stronger steps are called for now.
Aid to Israel cannot be a blank check. It must be driven by U.S. interests. And currently, the Netanyahu government (which also sat on the fence when the U.S. called for support in Ukraine) is not acting in those interests.
Shockingly, one senior U.S. government official said to me recently that as the U.S. pursued normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, it was the Israeli government rather than that of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (also known as MBS—a leader with whom they have had bad blood), that was proving the more difficult with which to deal.
U.S. political leaders must finally tune out the specious argument that opposing the actions of a racist Israeli government contemptuous of international law and fundamental human rights is somehow antisemitic. No one is doing more damage to the legitimacy of the state of Israel than the current Israeli government. No one is a greater threat to the state of Israel than Netanyahu and his coalition.
The only way to revive the “special relationship” is to establish that the U.S. and Israel are actually bound together by genuinely shared values. We must be clear about what that means and about the concrete costs of failing to re-establish those values as guiding principles of the Israeli government.
We must also recognize that it means protecting the rights not only of Israeli Jews but of Palestinians, as well, of making democracy and the transparent rule of law available to all who live within the borders—not just of the state of Israel but of the territories over which it exerts its authority. Because giving the Israeli government license to abuse the rights of Palestinians is part of what sent the message that we would tolerate the other abuses they have subsequently committed.
We must also recognize that Netanyahu hopes (and perhaps believes) that he can restore the special relationship by waiting for Donald Trump to be reelected. He knows that a Trump administration would not only be as contemptuous of democracy as he is, but it would be seeking to implement similar policies, in part because Trump (like Netanyahu) shares the desire to use power as a way of avoiding jail time for past crimes.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives for a hearing at the Magistrate's Court in Rishon Lezion on January 23, 2023.
Abir Sultan / Getty
Of course, the consequence of a restoration of ties based on the further debasement of the principles on which both governments were once founded would mean something much worse than the end of an international relationship. It would mean a devastating blow to democracy and the rule of law worldwide. It would be a catastrophe for both nations and the planet.
We have come to this dangerous moment by failing to acknowledge and actively work to stop the enemies of our values, our standing, and our security. Given the stakes and the precariousness of the current situation in both countries, we must use every legal lever available at our disposal to undo the damage that has already been done and to stop further erosion at the foundations of our societies.
The Daily Beast.
U.S. Confronts Tight but Turbulent Relationship With Israel
Peter Baker and Lisa Lerer
Mon, July 24, 2023
President Joe Biden, right, meets with President Isaac Herzog of Israel in the Oval Office on Oct. 26, 2022. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)
Long before moving into the White House, President Joe Biden compared the relationship between the United States and Israel to that of close friends. “We love one another,” he said, “and we drive one another crazy.”
The United States and Israel are currently in one of those driving-each-other-crazy phases of their usually tight but often turbulent 75-year partnership.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s quest to rein in the judiciary has become the latest point of contention as he pushed the first part of his package through the Israeli parliament Monday, defying widespread protests and repeated expressions of caution from Biden.
What makes this moment different is that the rift has nothing to do with the foreign policy and national security matters that typically provoke disagreement, like arms sales, Iran’s nuclear program, territorial claims or the long-running push to forge peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Instead, it concerns a strictly domestic issue inside Israel, namely the balance of power and future of freedom in the one historical bastion of democracy in the Middle East.
The friction among friends has complicated cooperation in other areas where the two allies have common interests. For months, Biden refused to invite Netanyahu to Washington, which prevented at least some meetings between lower-level officials. The president relented last week and agreed to get together at some as-yet-unspecified time and place in the United States this year. But he then felt compelled to issue two public statements making clear that he had not changed his mind about Netanyahu’s drive to limit the power of the courts even as the prime minister is on trial for corruption.
The debate about the prime minister’s plan, which drew hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets of Israel over the weekend in the latest of months of demonstrations, has spread to the Jewish community in the United States as well, at a time when rising partisanship has threatened to undermine American support for Israel.
“People who are left of center are worried or more upset about it overall than people who are right of center,” said Nathan Diament, executive director for public policy for the Orthodox Union, one of the largest Orthodox Jewish organizations in the country.
“There are many people in the American Orthodox community whose view on the substance is sympathetic or supportive to the reforms,” he added, noting that his community leans more politically conservative, “but nonetheless are worried about the divisiveness that the process has caused.”
Still, he and other longtime advocates and analysts said they remained confident that the relationship between the United States and Israel would endure. After a liberal Democratic congresswoman called Israel a “racist state,” the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution declaring the opposite was true. Only a handful of Democrats boycotted last week’s address to a joint meeting of Congress by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, and most of the rest gave him a standing ovation.
Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the fight over the judicial plan was “the clash of the century” within Israel, but it did not really affect relations with the United States in a profound way. “It’s a bit of a controversy lite,” he said. “In historical terms, this doesn’t begin to rank as a U.S.-Israel crisis.” Instead, he said, “this really is a fight within the family.”
The United States and Israel have had one of the world’s most intimate partnerships since the Jewish state was founded in 1948 and recognized minutes later by President Harry Truman. But conflict has been in the DNA of the relationship from the start. Every president — even the most outspoken supporters of Israel — has quarreled with Israeli prime ministers at one point or another.
Despite recognizing Israel, Truman refused to sell the new state offensive arms, as did his two successors. Dwight Eisenhower forced Israeli forces to withdraw from Egypt after the Suez crisis of 1956. Ronald Reagan was incensed by Israeli lobbying against his high-tech aircraft sale to Saudi Arabia. George H.W. Bush was so opposed to Israeli settlement plans that he suspended $10 billion in housing loan guarantees.
Netanyahu has been at the heart of many disputes in the last few decades. When he was deputy foreign minister, his public criticism of the United States in 1990 prompted an angry Secretary of State James Baker to bar Netanyahu from the State Department. Once Netanyahu became prime minister, Bill Clinton was so turned off after their first meeting in 1996 that he asked aides afterward, “Who’s the superpower here?” using an expletive for emphasis.
Barack Obama and Netanyahu, never warm, grew even more estranged when the Israeli leader delivered an address to a joint meeting of Congress to lash out at U.S. efforts to negotiate a nuclear agreement with Iran. Even Donald Trump, who bent over backward to give Israel virtually everything on its geopolitical shopping list, finally broke with Netanyahu, first over a disagreement about annexation and later over the Israeli’s congratulations to Biden for winning the 2020 election.
Biden’s relationship with Netanyahu has been scratchy going back years. Biden once said that he had given a picture to Netanyahu with an inscription using his nickname: “Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you say but I love you.” As vice president, Biden was undercut during a visit to Israel by a settlement announcement. But Biden later insisted that he and Netanyahu were “still buddies.”
In some ways, Biden’s approach to Israel has been different from those of his modern predecessors. While he has reaffirmed American support for a two-state solution to the Israeli conflict with the Palestinians, Biden is the first president in decades not to pursue peace talks, a recognition that there is no short-term prospect for success.
That by itself should have been a relief to Netanyahu, who has long resented American pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians. But Netanyahu has been outspoken in his criticism of Biden’s effort to negotiate a new nuclear agreement with Iran, while Biden has called Netanyahu’s cabinet “one of the most extreme” he had ever seen.
The judicial changes have been the latest sore point. When Vice President Kamala Harris addressed a celebration of Israel’s 75th anniversary at the country’s embassy in Washington last month, just two words in her speech describing shared values — “independent judiciary” — prompted Foreign Minister Eli Cohen to snap that she had not even read the plan. Yair Lapid, the opposition leader, recently lamented that because of Netanyahu “the United States is no longer our closest ally.”
For all that, Satloff said he did not believe Biden was “looking for a fight” with the Israeli leader — leading to last week’s invitation. “My sense is the administration came to the conclusion that this tactic of withholding a presidential meeting had run its course,” he said.
Nonetheless, Biden does not think much of the judicial restructuring package, going so far as to summon Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, to the Oval Office last week to say that Netanyahu should “seek the broadest possible consensus here.” He offered another statement to Axios on Sunday, saying that “it looks like the current judicial reform proposal is becoming more divisive, not less.”
Aides insist Biden is not trying to engineer a specific outcome in an ally’s internal politics. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the president was simply offering “judicious but straightforward” counsel.
“It’s not about us dictating or lecturing,” Sullivan said in a brief interview after an appearance last week at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. “It’s about us believing deeply that the bedrock of our relationship is our common democratic values.”
Other Democrats likewise said it was appropriate to weigh in with a friend. The enormous street protests “should be a cautionary note to elected leaders in Israel and I hope will give them pause,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a close Biden ally.
But some Republicans faulted Biden for intervening in a domestic issue. “Maybe he knows more about the judicial system and he feels comfortable about telling the Israeli people what they should do,” said Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee. “I don’t think that’s appropriate any more than they should be telling us how we should vote on the Supreme Court here.”
In the American Jewish community, the issue has not generated the same passion seen on the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
“The people who were very engaged in the Jewish organizational world were certainly activated by the proposed judicial reform, but I don’t think this gripped broadly the American Jewish community,” said Diana Fersko, senior rabbi at the Village Temple, a Reform synagogue in Manhattan.
Fersko, the author of a book about antisemitism that will be released this summer, said the issue is complicated and noted deep differences between Israeli and American societies. “I don’t think the Jewish American community needs to be overly involved in this,” she said. “But I do think we need to have a deep belief that the state of Israel will find a path forward.”
c.2023 The New York Times Company
Peter Baker and Lisa Lerer
Mon, July 24, 2023
President Joe Biden, right, meets with President Isaac Herzog of Israel in the Oval Office on Oct. 26, 2022. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)
Long before moving into the White House, President Joe Biden compared the relationship between the United States and Israel to that of close friends. “We love one another,” he said, “and we drive one another crazy.”
The United States and Israel are currently in one of those driving-each-other-crazy phases of their usually tight but often turbulent 75-year partnership.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s quest to rein in the judiciary has become the latest point of contention as he pushed the first part of his package through the Israeli parliament Monday, defying widespread protests and repeated expressions of caution from Biden.
What makes this moment different is that the rift has nothing to do with the foreign policy and national security matters that typically provoke disagreement, like arms sales, Iran’s nuclear program, territorial claims or the long-running push to forge peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Instead, it concerns a strictly domestic issue inside Israel, namely the balance of power and future of freedom in the one historical bastion of democracy in the Middle East.
The friction among friends has complicated cooperation in other areas where the two allies have common interests. For months, Biden refused to invite Netanyahu to Washington, which prevented at least some meetings between lower-level officials. The president relented last week and agreed to get together at some as-yet-unspecified time and place in the United States this year. But he then felt compelled to issue two public statements making clear that he had not changed his mind about Netanyahu’s drive to limit the power of the courts even as the prime minister is on trial for corruption.
The debate about the prime minister’s plan, which drew hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets of Israel over the weekend in the latest of months of demonstrations, has spread to the Jewish community in the United States as well, at a time when rising partisanship has threatened to undermine American support for Israel.
“People who are left of center are worried or more upset about it overall than people who are right of center,” said Nathan Diament, executive director for public policy for the Orthodox Union, one of the largest Orthodox Jewish organizations in the country.
“There are many people in the American Orthodox community whose view on the substance is sympathetic or supportive to the reforms,” he added, noting that his community leans more politically conservative, “but nonetheless are worried about the divisiveness that the process has caused.”
Still, he and other longtime advocates and analysts said they remained confident that the relationship between the United States and Israel would endure. After a liberal Democratic congresswoman called Israel a “racist state,” the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution declaring the opposite was true. Only a handful of Democrats boycotted last week’s address to a joint meeting of Congress by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, and most of the rest gave him a standing ovation.
Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the fight over the judicial plan was “the clash of the century” within Israel, but it did not really affect relations with the United States in a profound way. “It’s a bit of a controversy lite,” he said. “In historical terms, this doesn’t begin to rank as a U.S.-Israel crisis.” Instead, he said, “this really is a fight within the family.”
The United States and Israel have had one of the world’s most intimate partnerships since the Jewish state was founded in 1948 and recognized minutes later by President Harry Truman. But conflict has been in the DNA of the relationship from the start. Every president — even the most outspoken supporters of Israel — has quarreled with Israeli prime ministers at one point or another.
Despite recognizing Israel, Truman refused to sell the new state offensive arms, as did his two successors. Dwight Eisenhower forced Israeli forces to withdraw from Egypt after the Suez crisis of 1956. Ronald Reagan was incensed by Israeli lobbying against his high-tech aircraft sale to Saudi Arabia. George H.W. Bush was so opposed to Israeli settlement plans that he suspended $10 billion in housing loan guarantees.
Netanyahu has been at the heart of many disputes in the last few decades. When he was deputy foreign minister, his public criticism of the United States in 1990 prompted an angry Secretary of State James Baker to bar Netanyahu from the State Department. Once Netanyahu became prime minister, Bill Clinton was so turned off after their first meeting in 1996 that he asked aides afterward, “Who’s the superpower here?” using an expletive for emphasis.
Barack Obama and Netanyahu, never warm, grew even more estranged when the Israeli leader delivered an address to a joint meeting of Congress to lash out at U.S. efforts to negotiate a nuclear agreement with Iran. Even Donald Trump, who bent over backward to give Israel virtually everything on its geopolitical shopping list, finally broke with Netanyahu, first over a disagreement about annexation and later over the Israeli’s congratulations to Biden for winning the 2020 election.
Biden’s relationship with Netanyahu has been scratchy going back years. Biden once said that he had given a picture to Netanyahu with an inscription using his nickname: “Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you say but I love you.” As vice president, Biden was undercut during a visit to Israel by a settlement announcement. But Biden later insisted that he and Netanyahu were “still buddies.”
In some ways, Biden’s approach to Israel has been different from those of his modern predecessors. While he has reaffirmed American support for a two-state solution to the Israeli conflict with the Palestinians, Biden is the first president in decades not to pursue peace talks, a recognition that there is no short-term prospect for success.
That by itself should have been a relief to Netanyahu, who has long resented American pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians. But Netanyahu has been outspoken in his criticism of Biden’s effort to negotiate a new nuclear agreement with Iran, while Biden has called Netanyahu’s cabinet “one of the most extreme” he had ever seen.
The judicial changes have been the latest sore point. When Vice President Kamala Harris addressed a celebration of Israel’s 75th anniversary at the country’s embassy in Washington last month, just two words in her speech describing shared values — “independent judiciary” — prompted Foreign Minister Eli Cohen to snap that she had not even read the plan. Yair Lapid, the opposition leader, recently lamented that because of Netanyahu “the United States is no longer our closest ally.”
For all that, Satloff said he did not believe Biden was “looking for a fight” with the Israeli leader — leading to last week’s invitation. “My sense is the administration came to the conclusion that this tactic of withholding a presidential meeting had run its course,” he said.
Nonetheless, Biden does not think much of the judicial restructuring package, going so far as to summon Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, to the Oval Office last week to say that Netanyahu should “seek the broadest possible consensus here.” He offered another statement to Axios on Sunday, saying that “it looks like the current judicial reform proposal is becoming more divisive, not less.”
Aides insist Biden is not trying to engineer a specific outcome in an ally’s internal politics. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the president was simply offering “judicious but straightforward” counsel.
“It’s not about us dictating or lecturing,” Sullivan said in a brief interview after an appearance last week at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. “It’s about us believing deeply that the bedrock of our relationship is our common democratic values.”
Other Democrats likewise said it was appropriate to weigh in with a friend. The enormous street protests “should be a cautionary note to elected leaders in Israel and I hope will give them pause,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a close Biden ally.
But some Republicans faulted Biden for intervening in a domestic issue. “Maybe he knows more about the judicial system and he feels comfortable about telling the Israeli people what they should do,” said Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee. “I don’t think that’s appropriate any more than they should be telling us how we should vote on the Supreme Court here.”
In the American Jewish community, the issue has not generated the same passion seen on the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
“The people who were very engaged in the Jewish organizational world were certainly activated by the proposed judicial reform, but I don’t think this gripped broadly the American Jewish community,” said Diana Fersko, senior rabbi at the Village Temple, a Reform synagogue in Manhattan.
Fersko, the author of a book about antisemitism that will be released this summer, said the issue is complicated and noted deep differences between Israeli and American societies. “I don’t think the Jewish American community needs to be overly involved in this,” she said. “But I do think we need to have a deep belief that the state of Israel will find a path forward.”
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