Pro-Israel activists in the US scrambled to shore-up the strained alliance between the two countries on Sunday, as the arrival of Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu threatened to drive a wedge through a once unshakable fixture of American politics.
Some 16,000 supporters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) – hitherto one of the most powerful bipartisan lobby groups in the US – gathered in Washington for their annual conference, just as Netanyahu is due to address Congress on Tuesday. Many Democrats claim it is a partisan stunt designed to embarrass the White House over its talks with Iran.
An equally dramatic clash is expected on Monday, when White House national security adviser Susan Rice follows Netanyahu on to the stage at Aipac, to urgeIsrael and its US supporters to give the benefit of the doubt to the international talks, which are aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, rather than pursue what she has a called a “destructive” intervention.
With dozens of Democratic lawmakers threatening to boycott Netanyahu’s address to Congress and anger boiling over among some prominent Israeli Americans –who believe a deal will at best only delay the Iranian bomb – Aipac leaders are in a situation every bit as tricky as the talks in Geneva.
“There is no question that the way the [Netanyahu] speech has come about has created a great deal of upset among Democrats in Congress … it’s created some upset outside Capitol Hill and frankly it may have upset some people in this room,” Howard Kohr, Aipac’s chief executive, told its opening plenary on Sunday.
“All of us should be concerned that care so deeply about the bipartisan support for the US-Israel relationship, but … when the leader of our greatest ally in the region comes to Washington to talk about the greatest challenge of our time, we urge members of Congress to hear what he has to say.”
More than 30 Democrats have threatened to skip the speech but even those planning to attend are angry that Netanyahu claims to be a “representative of the entire Jewish people” on the issue.
“He doesn’t at all speak for me on this,” Senator Dianne Feinstein told CNN on Sunday. “I think it’s a rather arrogant statement. I think the Jewish community is like any other community: there are different points of view.”
She added: “I happen to believe Israel is a lot safer with an agreement that’s agreed to by all of the big powers including ourselves, than it is if there is no agreement and if Iran decides to breakout. Then Israel attacks Iran, Iran attacks back, then what happens?”
The warning was echoed again this weekend by the Obama administration, which has refused to send any representative to the speech or meet Netanyahu at the White House.
“I can’t promise you we can [reach a nuclear deal with Iran] … but we are going to test whether or not diplomacy can prevent this weapon from being created so you don’t have to turn to additional measures including the possibility of a military confrontation,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in an interview on ABC.
The evident tensions with the White House are relished by many Republicans, who see the clash as an opportunity to underline their support for Israel.
The evident tensions with the White House are relished by many Republicans, who see the clash as an opportunity to underline their support for Israel.
John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives who extended the invite to the Israeli prime minister, dismissed criticism that the controversy surrounding the visit had undermined Netanyahu’s ability to make his argument.
“The demand for seats in the house, the demand for tickets I’ve never seen anything like it. Everybody wants to be there,” Boehner told CBS. “It’s been frankly remarkable to me the extent to which, over the last five or six weeks, the White House has attacked the prime minister, attacked me for wanting to hear from one of our closest allies.”
At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), another Washington tradition that finished the day before Aipac began, some Republican analysts pointed to opinion polling suggesting Democratic supporters have long been more sceptical about Israel.
‘Why is that they are all yelling and screaming that Bibi is ending the bipartisan support for Israel?” said former lobbyist Jeff Ballabon in a session on the special relationship. “There hasn’t been bipartisanship for decades. There is a colossal partisan gap in this country when it comes to Israel.”
Prominent US rabbi Shmuley Boteach also sparked controversy on Sunday, with an advert in the New York Times, suggesting Rice had a “blind spot” when it came to the genocidal threat posed by Iranian nuclear weapons, which he compared with her response to genocide on Rwanda.
Netanyahu’s office disowned the ad, but with passions running so strong some Democrats have joined Aipac in urging everyone take a deep breath.
“Don’t lose focus; the bad guy is Iran,” Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland told the conference on Sunday. “We can never allow Israel to become a political wedge issue.”
Kohr added: “This is not a crisis, and it’s up to us to let it not become a crisis.”
But Netanyahu also faces growing concern back home in Israel, that his divisive speech threatens lasting damage to bipartisan US support.
Among those who have criticised the planned address is a former head of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency. Meir Dagan has announced he will be the keynote speaker at a rally later in the week calling on Israeli voters to replace Netanyahu in elections on 17 March.
In a trenchant critique of Netanyahu’s leadership delivered in a long interview in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Dagan accused Netanyahu’s policies of being “destructive to the future and security of Israel”.
The intervention by Dagan – who resigned as head of Mossad in 2011 – is doubly significant because he shares the prime minister’s view over the risk posed by a nuclear Iran and is regarded as generally hawkish on defence and security.
His intervention was echoed by another former Mossad head, Shabtai Shavit, and the former head of the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit. They are among scores of former commanders involved in a video published on Facebook calling for Israel to replace Netanyahu.
His intervention was echoed by another former Mossad head, Shabtai Shavit, and the former head of the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit. They are among scores of former commanders involved in a video published on Facebook calling for Israel to replace Netanyahu.
As he left Ben Gurion airport on Sunday morning Netanyahu was unrepetent, telling reporters he would not change his plan to speak out against a deal with Iran.
“I’m going to Washington on a fateful, even historic, mission,” he said. “I feel deep and sincere concern for the security of Israel’s citizens and for the fate of the state and of all our people. I will do everything in my power to ensure our future.”
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