Republicans Want to Give Netanyahu a Blank Check
During the 2012 presidential contest, one of Mitt Romney’s signature messages was that Barack Obama had allowed “daylight” to appear between the U.S. and Israel. Then as now, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was doing everything possible to undermine a two-state solution and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. It was a pretty remarkable position for the leader of the allegedly superpatriotic party of “American exceptionalism,” as I noted at the time:
Mitt Romney is running for president on a platform of indistinguishable and conjoined exceptionalism for the U.S. and Israel. And because Israel faces a vastly greater military threat, this means America would abandon its own independence of action and consign its fate to Bibi Netanyahu, a man whose views on peace and security are highly controversial in Israel itself.
Well, some things never change. As President Biden made it clear on Wednesday that he was ready to act on his warnings to withhold U.S. weapons if Israel uses them to destroy Rafah, the last city left in Gaza, now-Senator Mitt Romney again stood behind Netanyahu unconditionally:
Link to tweet
He’s hardly alone. Reports earlier this week that the Biden administration was “pausing” delivery of offensive weapons to Israel as that country’s government seemed to greenlight a deadly Rafah ground offensive sent leading congressional Republicans into a frenzy, as Politico reported:
Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) all voiced frustration with the move and said the administration must explain itself.
McConnell, in a floor speech Wednesday, jeered the administration’s professed ironclad commitment as bending “under the heat of domestic political pressure from his party’s anti-Israel base and the campus Communists who decided to wrap themselves in the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah.”
Read more: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/republicans-want-to-give-netanyahu-a-blank-check.html
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