Nor are many others. As Vox and others report, Netanyahu has done the unthinkable: he has managed to piss off two Fox News hosts enough that they have come to the defense of Obama.
Shepard Smith, quoting former Ambassador to Israel and political commentator Martin Indyk:
"Netanyahu is using the Republican Congress for a photo-op for his election campaign and the Republicans are using Bibi for their campaign against Obama... Unfortunately, the U.S. relationship will take the hit. It would be far wise for us to stay out of their politics and for them to stay out of ours."
Chris Wallace:
I think he's 100% right. And to give you a sense, I happened to be at the White House on Wednesday, when Boehner announced that he had invited, and that Netanyahu accepted this, and a top White House official was flabbergasted, said that 'we got no advance warning about his, we found out about it' —'we', them at the White House—and Boehner announced it to the press. And to make you get a sense of really how, forgive me, wicked, this whole thing is, Secretary of State John Kerry met with the Israeli Ambassador to the United States for two hours on Tuesday, Ron Dermer. The ambassador never mentioned the fact that Netanyahu was in negotiations and finally agreed to come to Washington, not to see the president, but to go to Capitol Hill, speak to a joint session of congress and criticize the president's policy. I have to say I'm shocked...
Shepard Smith:
It was Secretary Kerry who had a pretty good comeback to Boehner's political stunt here... and I wonder what your thought is about this, if in the end Netanyahu won't back out of this. Because members of his own Mossad have come out and said this is a horrible idea, and so have members of his own political party. Of course, his political opponents are screaming up and down, the newspapers over there are going wild over this, it just seems like they think we don't pay attention and that we're just a bunch of complete morons, the United States citizens, as if we wouldn't pick up on what's happening here!
Wallace:
Well, here's something that's real interesting about this. You know, it's two weeks before the election, and supposedly, I mean, I think Martin Indyk has it right. Bibi Netanyahu is an extremely savvy and successful politician. He wouldn't come here unless he thought it was to his political advantage. But one of the big issues in Israel is always the relationship between Israel and the U.S. And even when they are fighting with each other, the Israelis want to know that the U.S has their back. For Netanyahu to do something that is going to be seen as such a deliberate and really pretty egregious snub of President Obama, when Obama is going to be in power for the next year and three-quarters, it seems to me a very risky political strategy...for Netanyahu to come here and side with Boehner against Obama on Iran seems to me to be very dicey politics.
Smith:
You know, the last president, George Bush, used to say, "You must stop the expansion of the settlements." What did Israel do? They moved on with expanding the settlements. This president said, "You got to stop expanding the settlements!" and they just keep expanding the settlements. Leaving some in the White House to say, this is because Netanyahu doesn't really want a two-state solution, otherwise he'd work toward one. It's all very confusing, and highly complicated.
Throughout the exchange, Smith sounds genuinely pissed off. Wallace, the older one, comes off more as incredulous. But they speak of Obama as the president, and they compliment Kerry.
So, Netanyahu did it. Not only did he manage to piss off the White House, who control UN vetos, he managed to get some conservatives to turn against him and to show sympathy for Obama. He managed to remind the U.S. that Israel absolutely takes it for granted. Perhaps Netanyahu is feeling pressured by what is shaping to be a close election, and feels like he needs more than ever to wave his hawkish flag. But what if the horse he's riding on finally gets mad?
Sat Jan 24, 2015 at 11:47 PM PT: Interestingly, Smith's statement about the Mossad being against the visit is officially dismissed by Israel, as a lie [sic] disseminated by the White House. Someone at Fox didn't get the memo.
Update: Thanks for all the recs!
The story about the Fox News reaction seems to be getting reported especially in Israeli and Jewish-American news sources, more than in general-audience US sources. Right-wing commenters generally read it to mean that Wallace and Smith are liberal traitors.
It's been mentioned that Peres visited the Clinton White House in 1996, four weeks before the Israeli elections (in which Netanyahu won his first term.) That does look to me like the White House was trying to help Peres, not too subtly. Netanyahu sure did complain about it then (saying, "I can't find an example of any previous Israeli government whose prime minister, on the eve of elections, made a cynical attempt to use relations between Israel and the United States as a party advertisement.") In contrast, Netanyahu is now using his bad relations with the US president as a 'party advertisement'. The big difference is that the 1996 visit did not involve any insult to the U.S. government, or any appearance of interference in American politics.
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