Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to the U.S. Congress for a record fourth time today.
Netanyahu — who has been compared to former U.S. President Donald Trump — easily demonstrated his ability to speak more coherently, in complete sentences, and with rational thought, than any speech given by Trump. In fact, at times he was a brilliant public speaker.
There was none of the rambling incoherence, none of the incomplete sentences like a punch-drunk boxer throwing jabs at the air, no snake stories or a choice between staying in a burning electric boat or jumping into the water with a shark, no loss-of-thought “rabbit chasing” moments.
Reminding Americans of the lost art of bipartisanship, he thanked President Joe Biden for assembling the coalition that thwarted Iran’s April 14 missile and drone attack on Israel. And he thanked former and would-be president Trump for instituting the Abraham Accords that could now facilitate a wider “Abraham Alliance.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mike Johnson would have swallowed their tongues attempting to say such a thing about Biden.
Defending his record
The speech was a powerful attempt to defend Netanyahu’s record and attack his enemies. He didn’t tell us anything new or different. He was really speaking to the people of Israel long distance. So he gave them a giant pep talk. He knows that In Israel, two thirds of voters want him to resign.
“He was really speaking to the people of Israel long distance. So he gave them a giant pep talk.”
Netanyahu made a strong beginning statement even if tinged with a bit of overcooked dualism: “We meet today at a crossroads of history. Our world is in upheaval. In the Middle East, Iran’s axis of terror confronts America, Israel and our Arab friends. This is not a clash of civilizations. It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life.”
The strength of the speech was the emotional appeals Netanyahu made in the introduction. Channeling an inner Ronald Reagan, he introduced four soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces and hailed them as heroes. One soldier walked 8 miles to reach the battle and then killed “many terrorists.” Another lost a leg and “continued to fight.” Still another was a direct descendent of the Maccabees — the Jewish warriors of antiquity.
Speaking not to the U.S. Congress but to his own people, Netanyahu promised, “The sacrifice of your loved ones will not be in vain.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressing Congress after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Link to Pearl Harbor and 9-11
He made a smart allusion to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s declaration of war against Japan speech. “Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 — a day which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the empire of Japan,” Roosevelt said in slow, deliberate and grave terms. Netanyahu seamlessly connected the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 80 years earlier.
In case any member of the audience missed the historical connection, Netanyahu also spoke of October 7 in relation to 9-11: “Heaven turned to hell. 3,000 Hamas terrorists butchered 1,200 people. 29 9-11’s in one day. They burnt babies alive. They killed parents in front of their children. 255 hostages into the dark dungeons of Gaza. Israel has freed half of these hostages.”
“Like Dec. 7, 1941, and Sept. 11, 2001, October 7 is a day that will forever live in infamy.”
His speech seemed poised for rhetorical greatness as he described with deep pathos: “Like Dec. 7, 1941, and Sept. 11, 2001, October 7 is a day that will forever live in infamy.”
He continued: “It was the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. It began as a perfect day. Not a cloud in the sky. Thousands of young Israelis were celebrating at an outdoor music festival. And suddenly, at 6:29 a.m., as children were still sleeping soundly in their beds in the towns and kibbutzim next to Gaza, suddenly heaven turned into hell. Three thousand Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel. They butchered 1,200 people from 41 countries, including 39 Americans. Proportionately, compared to our population size, that’s like 20 9-11s in one day. And these monsters, they raped women, they beheaded men, they burnt babies alive, they killed parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents. They dragged 255 people, both living and dead, into the dark dungeons of Gaza.”
American and Israeli flags stand behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) following brief remarks prior to Netanyahu’s controversial address to a joint session of Congress in Washington, D.C., July 24, 2024. (Photo by ALLISON BAILEY/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
A war president
In the body of the speech, Netanyahu showed no sign of being anything other than a war president. His speech was an ongoing declaration of war.
This speech easily could be adapted for any Republican campaign speech in the coming months. Netanyahu and the Republicans are linked both politically and personally; they see each other as allies in the same battle. Their overlapping agendas are facets of the same conservative approach to America’s problems. They frame the disagreements as all-or-nothing struggles between good and evil, between freedom and oppression.
His speech hid his agenda as best he could. His coalition is a mortal danger to the democratic legitimacy of Israel.
Josie Klein Halevi, senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, speaks for more Israelis than Netanyahu: “The Netanyahu government is the most politically extreme, the most morally corrupt and the most contemptuous of good governance in Israel’s history. We have known governments with extremist elements, governments rife with corruption or incompetence. But not all at once and not to this extent.”
There was nothing in Netanyahu’s speech about the necessity of endless negotiation and compromise between competing worldviews.
“Netanyahu came across as an authoritarian demagogue.”
Netanyahu came across as an authoritarian demagogue. He didn’t come to advance democratic deliberation but instead to shut it down by scapegoating college protesters and academics — including the presidents of Harvard and MIT. He portrayed an authoritarianism with a kind of propaganda that takes advantage of a pre-existing culture of fear and hatred.
“Protesters holding signs ‘Gays for GAZA’ is like saying chickens for KFC,” he declared. This strange statement seemed oddly out of context as if Netanyahu needed to get in an anti-gay slur. He was supportive of LGBTQ rights until he needed the support of a small Israeli party riddled with homophobia to help him win the last election.
He chastised protesters for chanting “From the river to the sea” and said, “They don’t know which river and which sea. They not only get an F in geography, but they get an F in history.”
He attempted to confuse the line between legitimate questions about his war strategies and antisemitism: “Malicious lies are being leveled at the state of Israel. They are demonizing Jews everywhere.”
In reality, a person can be anti-Netanyahu politics and pro-Israel. But not in his mind.
A man mourns over the body of a casualty wrapped in a white sheet after Israeli bombardment at al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on July 9, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas militant group. (Photo by SAEED JARAS/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
Fact check
Netanyahu, like Trump, plays loose with facts and truth. Some of his remarks have been disputed by human rights groups and others are unverifiable or lacked context.
“Netanyahu, like Trump, plays loose with facts and truth.”
Netanyahu scoffed at the well-documented accusation Israel is starving the people of Gaza: “Nonsense. A complete fabrication. Hamas is stealing the food. Israel is not blocking the food.”
He added; “The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has shamefully accused Israel of deliberately starving the people of Gaza. This is utter, complete nonsense. It’s a complete fabrication. Israel has enabled more than 40,000 aid trucks to enter Gaza. That’s half a million tons of food, and that’s more than 3,000 calories for every man, woman and child in Gaza.”
This is not the conclusion reached by the United Nations. They have warned that hundreds of thousands of Gazans face starvation and Gaza is on the brink of famine. The people of Gaza face untold precarity.
Netanyahu also disputed the accusation Israel deliberately attacks civilians. Israel, he said, “dropped millions of flyers. Made hundreds of thousands of phone calls and emails to get civilians out of harm’s way. Hamas even shoots their own people.”
He quoted a retired British army officer, Col. Richard Kemp: “Israel has done more to prevent civilian loss than any army in history and beyond what international law requires.”
He offered statistics to make his case, claiming Israel has “the lowest ratio of combatant to noncombatant deaths in the history of urban warfare.”
He continued: “Last week I went into Rafah. The commander told me an exact number: 1,203 terrorists killed. I asked, ‘How many civilians were killed?’” The answer: “Practically none. Because Israel got the civilians out of harm’s way.”
“I asked, ‘How many civilians were killed?’” The answer: “Practically none.”
Again, that differs from widely published reports, including from his own government. In May, the Israeli government said its troops had killed 14,000 terrorists and 16,000 civilians. Officials in Gaza cite numbers much higher and say the majority of civilians killed were women and children.
Never mind, though, according to Netanyahu: “Israel’s soldiers should not be condemned for how they conducted the war in Gaza; they should be commended for it.”
Iran as the enemy
A major theme of the speech was devoted to Iran as the chief enemy of Israel and the United States. This replicates the same theme Netanyahu promoted in his 2015 speech when he shocked President Barack Obama with criticism of the nuclear deal with Iran.
Netanyahu also tied Israel’s fate to the fate of the United States: “Israel will always defend itself. The hands of Israel will never be shackled. What the USA must grasp: Iran is the enemy — behind all the terrorism, all the killing. Iran.”
He explained: “America stands in the way of Iran. That’s why Iran sees America as its greatest enemy. This is not a war with Israel. The real war is with America. Iran held American hostages for 494 days. Iran has maimed and killed thousands of American soldiers. They sent death squads here to murder. They brazenly threatened to assassinate President Trump.”
“This is not a war with Israel. The real war is with America.”
Never fear, though, he said: “Standing in Iran’s way is my country, the state of Israel. … When we fight Hamas, we are fighting Iran. When we fight Iran, we are fighting the enemy of America.”
Then he circled in for the money line for Republicans in the U.S. Congress: “We are protecting you! We are protecting America.”
A missed opportunity
I had hoped Netanyahu would offer the prospect of a ceasefire or a peaceful solution to the war in Gaza. He faced a remarkable moment to offer the United States a moment of clarity, a demonstration of true statesmanship. But that’s not what he brought.
In The Times of Israel, David Horovitz expressed a common opinion of Israelis: “If only Netanyahu governed Israel as effectively as he speaks about it. The prime minister delivered a masterful address to a largely enthralled Congress, hailing our nation and scorning its critics. But his public diplomacy skills were never in doubt.”
Horovitz holds back nothing in his condemnation: “His government is bloated with incompetent ministers and wastes precious resources on their narrow interests and pet projects. He brought messianists and racists into the heart of that government and indulges their pyromaniacal antics — because, again, to ditch these coalition partners would spell his political defeat. Under his leadership, the very foundations of that Israeli democracy he championed in his address were challenged last year by a bid to subjugate the judiciary to the will of his coalition — a devastatingly divisive gambit that emboldened Israel’s enemies and undermined the country’s deterrent capability.”
With criticism against him rising in Israel, Netanyahu aimed to portray himself as a statesman respected by Israel’s most important ally. He failed in that lofty goal. He fell flat as he came across as giving Republicans “political fodder” for the presidential election. Since Republicans are attempting to cast the Democrats as anti-Israel, Netanyahu certainly didn’t dampen those assumptions.
There was nothing remarkable, nothing of real substance. Netanyahu performed brilliantly at times, but behind the curtain of the speech there was the same politician who is willing to let a war drag on to remain in office, a man who has stopped caring for his country because he cares only for himself. He has willingly dragged Israel through four years of political turmoil just to avoid conviction in criminal proceedings. Where have we heard this story before?
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer who serves in New York state and Louisiana. He is the author of 10 books, including his latest, Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy.