Netanyahu visits Congress with big goals – but at hardest of times

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held court Wednesday within an extra-fortified U.S. Capitol, making the case that America’s security, liberty, and prosperity are interlinked with Israel’s. 

The speech, his first before both chambers of Congress in nearly a decade, marked what is likely his best opportunity until a new president is inaugurated in January to shore up U.S. political and military support. 

His pitch comes amid a devastating war with Hamas, whose sponsor Iran reportedly may be just weeks from achieving nuclear capability. In bracing language and imagery, the prime minister – an alum of one of Israel’s most elite special forces units – spoke in existential terms: life and death, liberty and tyranny, civilization and barbarity. 

“We meet today at a crossroads of history,” Mr. Netanyahu said, describing Iran’s “axis of terror” as a threat not only to Israel but also to America and Arab nations. “Our enemies are your enemies. Our fight is your fight. And our victory will be your victory.”

Rising Iran-linked threats in Middle East

It’s a crucial moment geopolitically, he and his Republican allies argue.

The Israel-Hamas war threatens to spiral into a broader regional conflagration, with Iranian proxy Hezbollah already attacking Israel from the north. The Lebanese group is believed to have stockpiled more than 100,000 missiles, whose far greater range and precision than those used by Gaza-based Hamas pose a far greater threat to Israel. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently warned that Iran may be within a week or two of achieving nuclear weapons capability.

But it’s also a terrible moment politically. Much of Washington is consumed with the U.S. presidential campaign, which has seen dramatic turns over the past month. 

Mr. Netanyahu will be meeting with President Joe Biden on Thursday, and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump in Florida on Friday. But it’s Congress that holds not only the purse strings to U.S. aid, but also the most direct connection to U.S. taxpayers, who for decades have underwritten Israel’s military capabilities.

Netanyahu speech draws mixed reactions

Israel maintains strong Republican support, including among Christians with deeply held biblical reasons for the alliance, beyond the geopolitical rationale. 

“For some of us it goes even deeper than that, because it is a matter of faith,” said GOP Speaker of the House Mike Johnson at his weekly press conference on Tuesday, in response to a question from the Monitor. “In Genesis, … it says very clearly that God will bless the nation that blesses Israel and curse the nation that curses Israel.” 

That view aligns with Mr. Netanyahu’s central message: America’s support for Israel helps not only its ally, but itself. But while Republicans praised the speech as clear and inspiring, Democrats came away disappointed with the tone and lack of specifics. 

“It was an unsurprising but unfortunate setback for the US-Israel relationship,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee. Instead of thoughtful analysis, he said, it offered “a lot of mindless war sloganeering.”

Democratic support for Israel wavers

The once-ironclad support Israel enjoyed from Congress has shown widening cracks.  

Though the prime minister received a formal bipartisan invitation from congressional leadership, dozens of Democrats skipped the speech, with some citing scheduling conflicts. Among them was Vice President Kamala Harris, who would normally sit on the rostrum behind Mr. Netanyahu, but was instead on the campaign trail as she appears poised to become the Democratic nominee for president. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer notably declined to shake hands with the prime minister, whom Mr. Schumer has referred to as one of the four main barriers to peace in the Middle East.

Democrats and allied groups have increasingly voiced concerns about the Jewish state’s treatment of Palestinians – not only in Gaza, where tens of thousands have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory military offense following the brutal Oct. 7 Hamas attack, but also in the West Bank. 

“I was expecting to hear at some point, some recognition of the loss of innocent Palestinian lives,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former U.S. Navy captain. He said he knows firsthand the difficulty of urban combat, but sees room for improvement by Israel.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the sole Palestinian American in Congress, sat draped in a Palestinian kaffiyeh holding up a small sign reading “WAR CRIMINAL” until a House official told her to put it away. 

Many Democrats don’t see Mr. Netanyahu engaging seriously with a postwar vision for peace.

“I want to talk about an actual solution that gets us to peace in the Middle East, that brings home the hostages, and that provides security for Palestinian people who are being killed every single day,” says Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who chairs the large Congressional Progressive Caucus and said Tuesday she planned to skip the speech in favor of meeting with families of Israeli hostages.

One freed hostage and relatives of others still in captivity accompanied Mr. Netanyahu, who acknowledged them in the crowd – along with several soldiers whom he honored. Some 120 hostages are still being held in Gaza after Hamas kidnapped them in the Oct. 7 attack, in which 1,200 were killed. Eight of the hostages are American. Relatives see the high-profile visit from Mr. Netanyahu has an opportunity to exert further pressure on the prime minister to secure a deal. 

“I want to be there to hear him say we are committed, we’re going to do this, we’re going to find a path, we’re working diligently to make sure it gets done,” says Efrat Moshkoviz of New Jersey, whose abducted niece Naama Levy – a 19-year-old Israeli soldier – became one of the first hostage faces to circulate in the media, with a video of her bloodied in a jeep in Gaza. “I want him to feel that pressure and hear our voices.” 

“King Bibi” a controversial messenger

Mr. Netanyahu is in some ways the best person and the worst person to make the case for more U.S. support for Israel.  

Having lived in the U.S. during his youth and early career, he is fluent in English and at home in America.

He has long fashioned himself as an ardent defender of Israeli security. When his brother Yonatan became a national hero after being killed while commanding the 1973 Entebbe raid that rescued nearly all 106 hostages taken in a plane hijacking, Mr. Netanyahu took up the mantle. With the help of such credentials, Mr. Netanyahu transformed himself from a shy young man into a master of shaping media narratives, as chronicled in the 2018 documentary “King Bibi.”  

Now serving in an unprecedented sixth term as prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu’s image has become intertwined with the image of Israel. And as he has increasingly allied himself with right-wing parties in Israel’s fractured coalition politics, that image – of both him and the country – has become more controversial. That has made it harder politically for Democrats to demonstrate unqualified support for Israel.

On Thursday, hundreds of Jewish Voice for Peace activists protested near the Capitol. About 200 of them were arrested. 

“We’re appalled that the U.S. would invite somebody who’s been considered a war criminal here to address Congress, and we’re demanding an immediate arms embargo,” says Noa Grayevsky, who was born in Israel but emigrated as a baby to the U.S. with her family. 

Congress has approved at least $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel since the Oct. 7 attack. According to figures from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the nearly 10 months of fighting, though the ministry does not distinguish between civilian and militant deaths.

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for both Mr. Netanyahu and Hamas this spring. Israel and its allies criticized the ICC for a lack of moral clarity, given Hamas’s barbaric attack and pattern of intermingling with the civilian population and hiding in underground tunnels.

“For Israel, every civilian death is a tragedy,” said Mr. Netanyahu. “For Hamas, it’s a strategy.”

An Israeli-Arab alliance against Iran?

He spoke of a new alliance in the Middle East of Israel and its Arab neighbors, who came together this spring to defend his country against a barrage of missiles from Iran. He described the alliance as “a natural extension of the groundbreaking Abraham Accords” – a Trump initiative that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states – which could counter Iran and its proxies.

“I thought the prime minister did an outstanding job of telling people exactly why this is important – not just for the people of Israel, but for folks in Nebraska,” said Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts afterward, speaking of his home state. “This is about taking on the evils of terrorism, and being on the frontline there to prevent it from spreading further.”

The prime minister framed this moment as an existential one for the Jewish people, who emerged from the Holocaust to establish the state of Israel three years after the end of World War II.

“‘Never again’ is now,” he said, before adapting a line from Winston Churchill. “Give us the tools faster, and we’ll finish the job faster.”