A Congressional address by an Israeli Prime Minister should be a welcome occasion that reaffirms the paramount importance of upholding the shared interests and values of both countries. It should be about strengthening the alliance between Americans and Israelis – not about strengthening the political position of any one politician or party.
Sadly, it is self-evident that – as we and many other Americans and Israelis warned – that is not what happened today.
“This was as divisive a speech as many of us feared,” said J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami. “While Israeli hostage families were outside calling for a hostage release deal, Netanyahu was inside trying to push any kind of ceasefire further from reach. Rather than calm tensions in the United States, he stoked them by attacking protesters and those concerned about civilian casualties. Rather than outline a plan for the future, he offered excuses for his failures. Heavy on spin and saber-rattling, light on any actual plan for peace and security.”
While Netanyahu made sure to check the key rhetorical boxes celebrating the US-Israel relationship, in particular thanking Americans and our lawmakers for supporting Israel with unprecedented security aid on a bipartisan basis, it’s clear that Netanyahu’s speech was really about one thing: showing the Israeli domestic audience that he is showered with praise in US halls of power even as he defies the Biden Administration, international law and the will of the Israeli people to do everything in his power to reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal.
Netanyahu used one of the world’s most preeminent platforms to explain away – or in some cases ignore – some of the most egregious conduct ever seen from an Israeli Prime Minister: his relentless, self-serving assault on Israel’s democracy and separation of powers; his malfeasance leading up to, during and since the horrific October 7 attack; his stalling of the Biden Administration’s efforts and rebuffing of Israeli hostage families’ pleas for a hostage release and ceasefire deal; his disastrous gambit to undermine the 2015 Iran Deal and escalate tensions with Iran; and his annexationist government’s relentless and illegal dispossession and suppression of Palestinians in the Occupied Territory.
There’s little doubt the Prime Minister and his far right supporters will – as they have in the past – point to or even use footage of this speech in their efforts to further delay accountability for him and his extremist ministers. And there’s even less doubt that Donald Trump’s supporters will use the speech and protests around it to try to further use Israel as a partisan wedge in our own domestic politics, to the detriment of the US-Israel relationship.
With this spectacle behind us, the hard work to achieve a ceasefire, release of hostages and an end to the humanitarian disaster in Gaza must urgently move forward. So too must the efforts of Americans and Israelis to protect their democracies against aspiring autocrats like Netanyahu and Trump – and to shift the momentum away from their annexationist vision for Israel-Palestine, and toward a peaceful end to this decades-long conflict that ensures the security, rights and well-being of both peoples.
J Street senior staff and hostage families protesting Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech are available for interview. Please contact [email protected].
On Thursday, July 25 at 12pm Eastern, J Street will hold a public briefing responding to the speech with guests including a Member of Congress, a representative of the hostage families and J Street’s Israel Director Nadav Tamir. Register here.