After Obama's reelection last night, predictable streams of bloated and vile rhetoric came from the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Donald Trump.
However, right-wing Israeli Knesset members did their best to impersonate, and sometimes even go beyond, their American GOP peers:
Knesset Member Danny Danon was one of the first to express his disappointment with the election results, saying that Obama cannot be trusted. "The State of Israel will not surrender to Obama. We have no one to rely on but ourselves," he argued.
Another Likud lawmaker said that "Obama is not good for Israel and we're concerned that he will try to pressure Israel into making concessions because of his chilly relationship with Netanyahu."
This is a lead that Israeli officials have taken from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who (
as I wrote about earlier)
meddled in the U.S. election on behalf of Mitt Romney and treated our sitting president in unspeakably rude ways.
Netanyahu not only made a terribly bad bet, he did so with so much bravado and contempt that many Israeli officials could barely watch as Netanyahu worked to degrade Israeli-American relations. From The Globe:
One former adjective-loving defence minister quoted by The Globe accused Mr. Netanyahu of "trying to intervene in a rude, blunt, unprecedented, wanton and dangerous manner in the U.S. election."
If you’re ever looking to define "chutzpah", just say "Bibi".
Now, Netanyahu is paying the price as Israelis realize their Prime Minister made a foolish gambit, and wonder whether he is the leader who can continue to work with their most important ally, the United States.
Netanyahu realizes this as well, which is why he's trying to shut up government officials like Dannon, ordering them to stop talking about Obama.
And it's why, today, Netanyahu stated he would "continue working with Obama" despite the rhetoric spewing from his cabinet and fellow Likud ministers.
It's rhetoric he began. Rhetoric that, in time, may up being his undoing.