The public quarreling between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama continues to break new records, as Netanyahu persists in shooting poisoned arrows at Israel’s greatest ally. My colleague Ben Caspit so aptly wrote Oct. 7 in Al-Monitor, “Netanyahu gambles on Israel’s future and here, in his country, they applaud him.”
The Israeli public — whether it applauds Netanyahu or feels distinctly uncomfortable about his needling of the Americans — believes that Netanyahu and Obama do not much like one another. In fact, mutual loathing and contempt would more precisely describe their feelings. Israelis are convinced, however, that the relationship between the superpower and its Israeli ally is firm and steadfast, resting on common interests and unaffected by the messy relationship between the two men. So what, they ask, if Netanyahu needled Obama about his “American values”?
Israelis living within the boundaries of their own country are not always sensitive to or even aware of nuances involved elsewhere. But Israel’s prime minister — who lived in the United States, studied at a Philadelphia high school and eventually served as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations — is expected to be deeply familiar with them. Saying of the US president that he does not act according to “American values” is almost tantamount to accusing him of treason. That blow to Obama was so aberrant and painful that White House spokesman Josh Earnest hurried to disdainfully reply that those same American values were, among other things, underwriting the Iron Dome air defense project.
Although Obama is not viewed as an especially popular president, at least according to some polls, American public opinion is unforgiving when it comes to unbridled criticism from the outside. What is permissible on one’s home turf is inappropriate coming from a prime minister of a foreign country. This was no longer criticism “between friends,” but wild exaggeration. The seeds of calamity being sown by Israel now will not wither on the day a new president moves into the White House.
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