US speaker’s bid to humiliate Obama is ‘stupid’

Inviting Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress was irresponsible, potentially dangerous and stupidly smart writes James Zogby

Was congressman John Boehner deceptively smart in inviting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address the Congress or tragically irresponsible? J. Scott Applewhite / AP photo

When I was growing up, this was the way that people described the behaviour of someone who was so cocky that they did really dumb things: “He’s so smart, he’s stupid.”

I thought of this expression when I heard John Boehner, speaker of the US House of Representatives, announce that he had invited Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress in order to challenge president Obama’s handling of “the grave threats of radical Islam and Iran”.

I’m sure that Mr Boehner thought that he was being the smartest guy in Washington. I’m sure that Mr Netanyahu too was congratulating himself on being smart enough to be in a position, once again, to launch a frontal assault on an American president who has had the temerity to oppose him.

According to Israeli press reports, the idea for the speech came from Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer. A former Republican operative, Mr Dermer is a confidant of both Mr Netanyahu and Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire who donates heavily to Mr Boehner’s Republican party.

Mr Netanyahu is running for reelection and his opponents in Israel are raising concerns that he has damaged the relationship with the US. Therefore, he craves the chance to stand before an adoring US Congress, receiving multiple standing ovations.

For years, he has worked with the neoconservative wing of the Republican party to sabotage US peacemaking efforts. During the 1990s, he collaborated with a Congress led by another Republican speaker, Newt Gingrich, to pass the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act, thereby overruling the objections of both the then US president (Bill Clinton) and the then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Once he was elected prime minister, Mr Netanyahu delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress at Mr Gingrich’s invitation and pledged to end the Oslo peace process. That speech had been written with the help of leading American neoconservatives.

He used his next appearance before Congress in 2011, at Mr Boehner’s invitation, to rebuke president Obama’s call for a peace agreement based on the “1967 borders with mutually agreed-upon land swaps.” Unsurprisingly, the ever self-assured Mr Netanyahu must now relish the opportunity to once again demonstrate that he, together with his Republican allies, can dominate Washington. That it comes just weeks before the election at home, is even better.

Crass political calculations are also key to Mr Boehner’s invitation. Not only does he get to embarrass the president, the invitation presents an opportunity for Republicans to make Israel a wedge-issue, to show that they, not the Democrats, are Israel’s best friends in Washington. And it doesn’t hurt that the invitation will make Mr Adelson happy. After all, he spent more than $100 million (Dh367m) in a failed effort to defeat Mr Obama in the 2012 presidential election and has committed to spend at least as much to have a Republican to the White House in 2016.

While the calculations made by both sides may seem smart, there’s more to this story.

Washington’s reaction to this breach of protocol was immediate. The White House and the State Department have made clear that they will not meet Mr Netanyahu. One American official was quoted in the Israeli press saying that Mr Boehner’s failure to call the White House ahead of the invitation “is so impolite that it is disgraceful. It is simply inconceivable”. Another American official reminded the Israelis that Mr Obama will be president for two more years, and doesn’t have to worry about another election campaign.

American commentators were equally put off, calling it an unprecedented breach of protocol. Several leading Israeli commentators also expressed concern that Mr Netanyahu’s “Congressional gambit ... could endanger Israel’s long-term interests in the United States”. They also suggested that it was unlikely to sway Israeli voters, who either love or hate Mr Netanyahu by now after his years in office. There are reports that the Israeli intelligence agency has warned a visiting group of US senators against imposing new sanctions on Iran because that would be akin to “throwing a grenade into the process” of nuclear negotiations.

The insult to president Obama may get cheers from some weak-kneed members of Congress in both parties, but it won’t sway voters either in Israel or the US. And if Congress attempts to buck the president by passing new sanctions legislation, he will, as promised, veto the bill.

The bottom line: this was one of the most irresponsible, and potentially dangerous political stunts ever engineered by American and Israeli political leaders. They were so smart, they were stupid.

James Zogby is the president of the Arab American Institute

On Twitter: @aaiusa