Melanie Phillips
JNS, Mar. 30, 2023
“Whatever individual protesters may have told themselves, the real purpose of the uprising was not to stop judicial reform. It was to get rid of Netanyahu.”
Whatever one thinks about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, any true Israeli patriot will surely react viscerally to U.S. President Joe Biden’s outrageous attack on Israel’s right to govern itself without foreign interference.
On Monday, Netanyahu announced he was suspending his coalition’s judicial reform legislation in order to negotiate a compromise with the opposition.
The next day, Biden told Netanyahu to “walk away” from the legislation, saying he was “very concerned” about the health of Israeli democracy. Warning that Israel “cannot continue down this road,” he added for good measure that he wouldn’t be inviting Netanyahu to the White House “in the near term.”
It is deeply disturbing that the U.S. should brazenly and insultingly interfere in the internal affairs of another country and tell its prime minister how to behave. Biden was supposedly speaking as Israel’s friend, but he sounded like a colonial administrator barking at the natives to fall into line.
While Likud politicians hit the roof, left-wing and centrist politicians and commentators got behind Biden and kicked Netanyahu even more viciously in the head.
After three months of mass protests, incitement to hysteria and ludicrous hyperbole about the end of democracy that have caused Israel untold social, financial and reputational damage, those who shared responsibility for the crisis took their cue from Biden and blamed Netanyahu instead.
Benny Gantz, leader of the National Unity party, called Biden’s comments “an urgent wake-up call for the Israeli government,” which he accused of delivering a “strategic blow” to Israel’s ties with the U.S.
One of his MKs, Gideon Sa’ar, declared, “Never has any government caused such immense damage to the country in such a short time.” He called Likud politicians’ objection to Biden’s unprecedented foreign interference “a total loss of judgment.”
This is all straight out of the Palestinian Arabs’ Orwellian playbook: Subject Israel to aggression and then blame Israel for causing that aggression by choosing to exist. … [To read the full article, click here]