It just keeps looking worse each day for the Boehner Bibi duo, and their Likud campaign extravaganza/ Photo Op coming up in the Capitol Building.
Israeli officials fail to quell Democratic revolt
By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE
Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein rushed to meetings on Capitol Hill on Wednesday trying to calm a furor created by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned speech to Congress next month and quell a Democratic revolt that has dozens threatening a boycott.
It didn’t work.
If anything, Democrats finished the day more frustrated. According to a source in the room, one Jewish Democratic member of Congress even accused Dermer of being insincere when he claimed not to have anticipated the partisan uproar he’d ignite when he skirted protocol and went around the White House and scheduled the speech only with House Speaker John Boehner.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest, meanwhile, dangled the possibility that the White House would have Vice President Joe Biden skip the speech in what the West Wing acknowledges would be a serious snub.
The U.S. and Israeli alliance is rooted in deep defense, security, economic and investment ties, and all sides insisted the U.S. commitment to defend Israel is unaffected by the unseemly dispute of the last two weeks. And with Netanyahu on course to be reelected in March, he and President Barack Obama will need to find a way to talk again.
But the ongoing dispute over the speech seemed likely to make that more difficult than ever.
“The muddled manner in which this invitation to speak to Congress has been handled is striking,” said Edward Djerejian, a former ambassador to Israel and the founding director of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
As the speech draws nearer the the whole arrogant manner Boehner and Netanyahu set the speech up to influence not only US Middle East Policy, but influence the outcome of the Israeli election comes into a sharper focus and the uglier it looks in both countries.
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