They're Shocked, Shocked
It almost certainly wasn't sudden or a surprise to Netanyahu. Yesterday I linked to a 2016 article at the Times of Israel that said, "On January 20 — Inauguration Day — President Barack Obama will exit the world stage, and with him the specter of vindictive action against the Israeli government." Netanyahu fully understood where he in particular stood with Obama and any of his Democrat allies. A 2015 story at CBS made this plain:
President Obama sent top political advisers to Israel to influence the election's outcome and prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's win, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said Tuesday.
"He can't say he has a business-like relationship or that it isn't personal when his entire political machine, virtually, some of the top people in his political operation, were in Israel on the ground trying to defeat Netanyahu, which is unprecedented," Rubio told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt in a radio interview Tuesday. "You know, he didn't send anyone in any other country to try to influence the outcome of those elections."
. . . [Obama] has recently dismissed reporting of his strained connections with the newly re-elected Israeli leader, instead characterizing their relationship as "very businesslike."
"The issue is not a matter of relations between leaders. The issue is a very clear, substantive challenge," Mr. Obama told reporters Tuesday in a press conference held with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. "We believe that two states is the best path forward for Israel's security, for Palestinian aspirations and for regional stability. That's our view and that continues to be our view. And Prime Minister Netanyahu has a different approach."
What puzzles me is that Alan Dershowitz is very close to Netanyahu, and in at least two recent podcasts, he's made the point that he speaks to Netanyahu on the phone several times a week. Netanyahu seems never to have harbored any illusions about US views on a two-state solution, particularly under Obama and Biden, yet Dershowitz's current podcasts have expressed the much more typical, and naive, reactions of surprise and disappointment.I've got to think there's some deliberate indirection taking place here -- Dershowitz often implies that he's much closer to the thinking of Israeli leadership than he lets on here. And as I suggested yesterday, Netanyahu is necessarily a US political player as much as he is an Israeli, because as we've seen here, US politicians will send their advisers to help Netanyahu's opponents in Israel -- so if he's smart, Netanyahu will fight back in the US.
For instance, what just happened here?
Buried in a glowing [New York] Times report written by far-left columnist Peter Baker is a mention that's raising some eyebrows and will no doubt be of interest to Congressional Republicans. In the piece, the president is painted as a stalwart defender of human rights standing up to the evil Israeli government, but amid the tongue bath is an admission that the White House hid a call readout to avoid public backlash.
That revelation comes just days after Biden was caught stopping aid shipments to Israel in an effort to regain his domestic political footing, yet another thing Democrats have assured us is impeachable.
Biden privately threatened to rethink his support for the war in a private call with Netanyahu in February, two months before doing so publicly, but the White House didn't put it into the readout of the call to try to avoid a public blowup. https://t.co/zPytMW5glq
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) May 11, 2024
That threat, made in the call February 15, was more than two months prior to the passage "after months of struggle" in the House of aid to Ukraine and Israel --but Biden himself appears to have been equivocal. This appears to have surprised Speaker Johnson:
House Speaker Mike Johnson said he felt betrayed by President Biden’s threat to withhold US weapons shipments to Israel and expressed hope the remark could be chalked up to a “senior moment.”
. . . “I don’t think that’s something that staff told him to say. I hope it’s a senior moment, because that would be a great deviation in what is said to be the policy there.”
However, the question does arise -- who leaked the threat and forced Biden to take a public stand? Because the big loser here is Joe Biden.
From a political and tactical standpoint, this decision by the President may be the dumbest one he's committed to date, and that's saying something with Joe Biden, because there is literally no upside, and only downside. If you are a Democratic member of the House or Senate who voted for the aid package last week that the President signed, a vote that was fraught with political peril considering a third of the Democratic base is abjectly antisemitic, . . . you only have the fever swamp trying to primary and/or harass you wherever you go. You're pretty ticked off.
If you're a NeverTrumper, one who made the case in 2020 that Joe Biden was by far the better option, and until this week still tried to stake out that ground in 2024, Wednesday's interview from Wisconsin with CNN's Erin Burnett stabbing Israel in the back was the final straw.
If Netanyahu was at least rooting for Trump from the sidelines in 2016, it looks like he's actively in the game in 2024. And he's a very agile politician.