Anshel Pfeffer Haaretz
If Benzion Netanyahu had his way and, instead of being forced by his wife Cila to return to Jerusalem in late 1948, he had kept his family in New York, Benjamin Netanyahu would have been born there. Perhaps he would have gone into politics and become the first Jewish president of the United States. On Wednesday evening, we had a glimpse of that parallel universe.
Netanyahu’s address to the joint meeting of Congress was a studied imitation of a presidential State of the Union, complete with the recognition of distinguished guests in the gallery at the start and the “God bless the United States of America” at the end.
But Netanyahu was not born in the U.S. He is the prime minister of Israel, and nowhere in the 52 minutes of his record-breaking fourth address (yes, he made sure to mention right at the very beginning how many times he had been given this honor) was there any detail, not even the slightest hint, of how he plans to extricate Israel from the tragic impasse in which it’s trapped, and on his watch.
Netanyahu may have won 52 standing ovations from the rapturous, majority-Republican audience, but his rhetoric that so impressed the natives in Washington offered nothing for Israelis watching back at home.
The first half of his speech was devoted to stories of the heroism of Israeli soldiers on October 7, and graphic details of Hamas’ bestiality on that day. But there was so much missing from that account. Nothing about how the strategic concepts of a prime minister who had led his country for 15 years crumbled that day. Nothing about the failures that allowed Hamas to kill and kidnap hostages at will. Or about his refusal to form a commission of inquiry.
He lauded the IDF soldiers who fought on October 7 as “unbowed, undaunted, unafraid,” and of course the soldiers brought to represent the IDF were an Ethiopian-Israeli paratrooper and a Bedouin master-sergeant. They are indeed worthy of recognition, despite Netanyahu’s blatant tokenization. But he has yet to summon up the courage to meet with any of the kibbutz communities devastated on that day.
He spoke of the ordeal of former hostage Noa Argamani, who stood there uncomfortably in the audience as an excruciatingly exuberant Sara Netanyahu gripped her with one arm and petted her with the other. Two seats away stood the beaming wastrel son Yair, on a day-trip form his opulent, taxpayer-subsidized exile in Miami. A 33-year-old Israeli who has nothing in common with the brave soldiers brought to serve as window-dressing for his father’s speech.
It was a speech that had Netanyahu written all over it. All the old hasbara clichés he’s used so many times, the regulatory lame joke (a tip he once got from Larry King that he abides by) and the biblical verse in Hebrew. But it was a speech about a reality Netanyahu is extraordinarily detached from. He talked of Hamas saying “they will carry out October 7 again and again and again. I swear to you today I will never allow that to happen,” and every Israeli watching who is not a member of the shrinking Bibi-worshipping cult said to themselves at that moment, “but you already have!”
There were some disruptions and protesters in the gallery. Seven members of hostage families were forced to leave by the Capitol Police. That humiliation was only compounded by the fact that Netanyahu had nothing for them but an empty promise that “efforts are happening right now” to free their loved ones.
They’ve been hearing those promises for nearly 10 months and they know the truth. That Netanyahu opposed the first hostage release agreement back in November and it took all of President Joe Biden’s pressure to make it happen, and that he’s spent the last few months, under pressure from his far-right coalition partners, delaying and preventing another deal.
Before the speech his entourage briefed that he would present “a vision” for the future of Gaza and the region. In the end that vision consisted of “a demilitarized and deradicalized” Gaza. Just how Netanyahu, who can’t even get his ultra-Orthodox partners to teach their kids math, is planning to educate “a new generation which must be taught not to hate Jews” wasn’t quite clear, but he was already on to the next round of slogans about an “Abraham Alliance” between Israel and “moderate” Arab nations, but once again, forgot to mention his coalition, which won’t allow him to even breathe the words “two-state solution,” which are the first condition for this alliance.
For Netanyahu, it was a triumph. It was a day on which he got in everything that means anything to him. But Israelis got nothing.