{"id":183169,"date":"2015-02-08T23:18:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T04:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/02\/08\/it-really-sucks-to-be-bibi-right-now\/"},"modified":"2015-02-08T23:18:00","modified_gmt":"2015-02-09T04:18:00","slug":"it-really-sucks-to-be-bibi-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/02\/08\/it-really-sucks-to-be-bibi-right-now\/","title":{"rendered":"It Really Sucks to be Bibi Right Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>And now, the head of the ADL has called for Netanyahu to cancel his speech before Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It really does not get any more mainstream in Jewish American politics than the Anti-Defamation League:<\/p>\n

As the controversy surrounding Benjamin Netanyahu speech to Congress reaches new heights, one of the Jewish community\u2019s top leaders is calling on the Israeli prime minister to stay home.<\/span>

<\/span> Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti Defamation League said that the political uproar ignited by Netanyahu\u2019s invitation to speak to a joint meeting of Congress makes such a move unhelpful and therefore it should be scrapped.<\/span>

<\/span> \u201cIt\u2019s a tragedy of unintended consequences,\u201d Foxman told the Forward, describing how the idea of presenting Israel\u2019s view on Iran spiraled out of control, reaching even the Jon Stewart show, a step, Foxman said, that \u201cturned the whole thing into a circus.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span> \u201cOne needs to restart, and it needs a mature adult statement that this was not what we intended,\u201d Foxman told the Forward. He said that going ahead as planned with the speech would be counter-productive, with all attention given to the political controversy rather than to the issue at stake. \u201cIt has been hijacked by politics,\u201d Foxman said. \u201cNow is a time to recalibrate, restart and find a new platform and new timing to take away the distractions.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span> Foxman noted that he does not dispute the seriousness of the Iranian nuclear issue and that he agrees with Netanyahu on the need to strengthen sanctions against Tehran, but he argued that recent events have derailed the initial intention of Netanyahu\u2019s address to Congress.<\/span>

<\/span> Among the potential alternatives mentioned by Foxman for Netanyahu\u2019s congressional speech were coming to Washington only for the AIPAC conference, postponing his address until after the March 17 elections in Israel, or expressing his concerns over the emerging Iran deal in direct conversations.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a polite way of telling Netanyahu to STFU, and I don’t recall the ADL EVER<\/b> rebuking an Israeli PM so strongly.<\/p>\n

Boehner saw it as a way of embarrassing Obama, and Netanyahu saw it as a way of boosting his own electoral prospects, and it looks like they are 0 for 2.
It is so good to see this blowing up in the faces of those weasels (Boehner and Netanyahu).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And now, the head of the ADL has called for Netanyahu to cancel his speech before Congress. It really does not get any more mainstream in Jewish American politics than the Anti-Defamation League: As the controversy surrounding Benjamin Netanyahu speech to Congress reaches new heights, one of the Jewish community\u2019s top leaders is calling on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[998,1000,1159,978,1019],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress","category-elections","category-israel","category-politics","category-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}