WaPo | Like every world leader and, for that matter,
nearly everybody else, Netanyahu is fully aware that the fault lines in
U.S. politics between Republicans and Democrats have widened to a chasm.
Unlike every other world leader, the bumptious Bibi has decided to take
a side in America’s internal conflict by addressing a joint meeting of
the Republican-controlled Congress (responding to an invitation from
House Speaker John Boehner) without even informing President Obama that
he was Washington-bound. One of Netanyahu’s goals is to undercut the
administration’s efforts to negotiate a pact with Iran that will impede
that nation’s nuclear program. His other goal is clearly to stick it to
Obama and thus appear to the Israeli electorate — which will go to the polls on March 17 — as one tough dude. If Netanyahu’s talk, the idea for which was at least partly cooked up by Ron Dermer,
a former GOP operative who moved to Israel and is now its ambassador to
the United States, also has the effect of boosting the Republican Party
at the expense of Obama and the Democrats, so much the better. During
the 2012 election, Netanyahu did everything he could to make apparent
that he preferred Mitt Romney to Obama, with no perceptible effect on
the outcome or even on the voting preferences of American Jews, who backed Obama, 69 percent to 30 percent.
Of
all the reasons that American Jews remain firmly Democratic, and
liberal as well, the most fundamental is their commitment, both
particular and universal, to minority rights. For Jews in a
majority-Christian country, the enshrinement of minority rights and its
institutional guarantees — nondiscrimination in hiring and voting, say,
or a judiciary independent of the elected branches of government — has
always been paramount. It’s why American Jews have embraced not only the
battles for their own liberties but those of every other minority
group.
