“Disgraceful defamation of the Peoples’ Legislature” — Ralph Nader on the opposition the Israeli prime minister is facing both at home in Israel and in the U.S.
March on Washington for Gaza, Jan. 13, 2024. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Unless the GOP in Congress has a last-minute rethinking, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel will enjoy his record-setting fourth address to a Joint Session of Congress on Wednesday.
Scores of Democrats are boycotting the event. Meanwhile, in Gaza, Netanyahu is committing mass murders and war crimes and killing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians, most of them children and women, blowing up their crucial life-saving facilities, and wounding the survivors rendered homeless and defenseless against Biden-provided deadly weapons.
Netanyahu’s first address to Congress was on July 10, 1996, when a younger Netanyahu promised to end U.S. aid to a prosperous Israel and received a standing ovation. He obviously has broken this promise, as his U.S. lobbies have demanded tens of billions of more U.S. taxpayer dollars.
Netanyahu’s third address to Congress on March 3, 2015, bypassed then-President Barack Obama in an arrogant breach of protocol. The supine Congress gave him many standing ovations.
The push for Netanyahu’s forthcoming address was spearheaded by the fanatic GOP House Speaker Michael Johnson (R-LA) who easily politically intimidated House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) into going along.
Johnson’s invitation has outraged many Israelis — majorities of whom despise Netanyahu, who is under indictment by Israeli prosecutors for corruption and because of his attacks on the judiciary and destruction of their protest rights.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told CNN regarding the invitation to Netanyahu, “I think this is wrong.” Hundreds of House and Senate staffers are signing petitions urging Democratic lawmakers to protest or boycott it. The staffers pointed to “bombings of schools, hospitals, and mosques” and a “campaign of mass starvation against Palestinian children” in addition to censoring media coverage of the devastation.
Noting that world opinion is overwhelmingly against Netanyahu’s genocidal war on Gaza, the staffers’ letter emphasized that “Israelis have been protesting in the streets for months, decrying his failure to negotiate a cease-fire and release of hostages.”
Israelis protest against Netanyahu outside his official residence in Jerusalem on July 30, 2020. (Yaara Di Segni, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
An outstanding affirmation of these sentiments by congressional staff came on June 26 in an op-ed in The New York Times by six very prominent Israelis, including a former prime minister, titled “We Are Israelis Calling on Congress to Disinvite Netanyahu.”
It is pertinent to present an excerpt from this urgent dispatch, as follows:
“WE ARE ISRAELIS CALLING ON CONGRESS TO DISINVITE NETANYAHU
By David Harel, Tamir Pardo, Talia Sasson, Ehud Barak, Aaron Ciechanover, and David Grossman
The leaders of the U.S. Congress have invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to address a joint meeting of the Senate and the House of Representatives on July 24. Normally, we Israelis would consider the invitation recognition of our two nations’ shared values and a welcome gesture from our closest friend and ally, to whom we are deeply and morally indebted.
But Congress has made a terrible mistake. Mr. Netanyahu’s appearance in Washington will not represent the State of Israel and its citizens, and it will reward his scandalous and destructive conduct toward our country.
We come from a variety of areas of Israeli society: science, technology, politics, defense, law, and culture. We are thus in a good position to assess the overall effect of Mr. Netanyahu’s government, and like many, we believe that he is driving Israel downhill at an alarming speed, to the extent that we may eventually lose the country we love.
To date, Mr. Netanyahu has failed to come up with a plan to end the war in Gaza and has been unable to gain the freedom of scores of hostages. At the very least, an invitation to address Congress should have been contingent upon resolving these two issues and, in addition, calling for new elections in Israel.
Inviting Mr. Netanyahu will reward his contempt for U.S. efforts to establish a peace plan, allow more aid to the beleaguered people of Gaza, and do a better job of sparing civilians. Time and again, he has rejected President Joe Biden’s plan to remove Hamas from power in Gaza through the establishment of a peacekeeping force.
Such a move would very likely bring in its wake a far broader regional alliance, including a vision to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is not only in Israel’s interest but also in the interest of both political parties in the United States. Mr. Netanyahu constitutes the main obstacle to these outcomes.
The man who will address Congress … has failed to assume responsibility for the blunders that allowed the Hamas assault, initially blaming security chiefs (then quickly backtracking), and has yet to announce the establishment of a direly needed state commission of inquiry headed by a Supreme Court judge to look into the fiasco.)
…..Above all, many Israelis are convinced that Mr. Netanyahu has obstructed proposed deals with Hamas that would have led to the release of the hostages in order to keep the war going and thus avoid the inevitable political reckoning he will face when it ends.
…..For months now, many of us have participated in nationwide demonstrations demanding an immediate release of the hostages, an end to the war, and immediate elections. Polls of Israelis show that a majority want immediate elections, or elections right at the end of the war.
A large portion of Israelis have lost faith in Mr. Netanyahu’s government.”
That’s where Netanyahu’s speech to Congress fits in with his political needs. No doubt it will be carefully stage-managed to prop up his shaky hold on power and allow him to boast to his constituents about America’s so-called support for his failed policies.
His supporters in Israel will be emboldened by his appearance in Congress to insist that the war continue, which will further distance any deal to secure the release of the hostages, including several U.S. citizens.
Giving Netanyahu the stage in Washington will all but dismiss the rage and pain of his people, as expressed in the demonstrations throughout the country. American lawmakers should not let that happen. They should ask Netanyahu to stay home.”
This full communication to the American people can be seen either in The New York Times or the Congressional Record of July 11.
There will be mass protests outside Congress on Wednesday by Jewish Voice for Peace, CodePink, Veterans for Peace, and other civic groups.
But there would be a great benefit for boycotters like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Progressive House Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), and Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) to secure a House Committee Room and invite, via Zoom, these six leading Israelis to testify before the media on the same day.
These messages could reach the grisly, complicit architects of this disgraceful defamation of the Peoples’ Legislature more than the bullhorns of the upstanding peaceful protesters kept far away by the security police.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and the author of The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future (2012). His new book is, Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lies and Lawbreaking Betray All (2020, co-authored with Mark Green).
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
When congress applauds a blood thirsty fiend such as, in my humble opinion, Netinyahoo is , I believe we all know the deep state is running the country. I personally owe no allegiance to the congress or the deep state.
When the so called scrotus ruled money was the same as speech the deed had been done. It has been all down hill for the working man since that happened.
For the sake of Dog figure this shit out!!
Mr. Nader, “Israelis (may) have been protesting in the streets for months, decrying (Netanyahu’s) failure to negotiate a cease-fire and release of hostages”, but with all due respect, one has to ask: Do you not yet understand that their protesting for a cease-fire has nothing to do with the intent behind the genocidal actions which the Israeli regime is perpetrating against the non-Jewish Arab Semites of the Levant/western Asian peninsular
The intent is, and has always been, since the states formal establishment, in 1948, to ethnically cleanse, remove, annihilate, and in this latest of atrocities (whichever term is intellectually assimilable), to once and for all eradicate, or if truth be spoken out loud, to enforce the ‘final solution’.
The actions of the endeavors of historical Nazism sends a chilling wave of horror and shame down the spine.
The shame is the Israeli behavior, as it is the latest pox on all of humankind.
Ralph Nader knows all this. He is just too much of a gentle ‘soul’ diplomat to state the aforementioned, obvious harsh truth.
Congress listened to Netanyahu, the mass murderer, with glee in their hearts. mindless fools, every last one…
Thank you Ralph, as always. This will be an un-washable stain on the United State’s diminished reputation, forever.
Well, of course Netanyahu is going to address Congress – after all, he owns them. What everyone doesn’t seem to understand about the situation in the west is that the only alternative to death by military might is slavery. Slavery by censorship, slavery by economic means, slavery by diminished possibilities for the future – it is all slavery to the human spirit. Netanyahu is seeking to normalize murder in the name of the state of Israel. The rest of us are just collateral damage in pursuit of that aim. It is a great accommodation to be one of those allowed to witness the man himself coming to town to set matters straight in terms of our future aims. Oh, and many of those protesting his presence will be voting yes on legislative bills shortly after to secure Netanyahu’s right to Attila the Hun all of Gaza. Everyone in Congress, almost without exception, has done so in the past.
A word missing from the impassioned plea of the Israelis: Genocide.