The Middle East region closely watched Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Tuesday in what was tantamount to a campaign speech of the greatest possible exposure.
The reaction in Israeli media largely focused on the “controversial” nature of the speech, seen as a move by Netanyahu to pit himself against President Barack Obama for the sake of making an alarming assessment of Iran.
“It was widely suggested, ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu’s spectacularly controversial address to Congress on Tuesday, that the prime minister would have to deliver the speech of his life in order to justify the damage he would inevitably be causing to relations between his government and the Obama administration,” wrote David Horovitz, founding editor of The Times of Israel.
The Times and others noted that Netanyahu’s repeated reference to the “very bad deal”—the nuclear deal with Iran that Obama has been spearheading—was to convey that Obama was horribly miscalculating Iran’s modern history and future intentions.
While Israelis definitely fear a nuclear Iran, there was heavy criticism about Netanyahu’s timing—both before and after his speech.
On the verge of national elections on March 16, Israeli TV had to broadcast the speech with a five-minute delay to edit out any politicking. Even with that safeguard, though, the high-profile performance to both houses of Congress was enough to convey a sense of hefty endorsement for Netanyahu from political allies in the most powerful nation in the world.
Referring to the members of Senate as “my friends,” Netanyahu spoke forcefully and confidently as he got one standing ovation after another, sometimes pausing to wait for a deeper crescendo of applause after making key points. His wife accompanied him, much like the first lady does when Obama makes his State of the Union address.
At one point, Netanyahu stopped and pointed out the presence of Nobel Prize-winning Jewish author, philosopher, and humanist Elie Wiesel in the gallery next to his wife, and invoked the memory of the Holocaust by referring to Wiesel’s work to bear witness to that genocide.
