Netanyahu’s miscalculation

Journalists describe what they do as the “first draft of history” for a reason: it’s not that the first draft of a story is wrong, only that it’s incomplete. A first draft is a first draft, but it’s never the last; over time, stories are edited, shaped, rethought and rewritten. Inevitably, the real, and final, story catches up to the first draft, with a more nuanced perspective replacing the first, emotional, blush.

So it is with Binyamin Netanyahu’s appearance on Tuesday

What I heard today felt to me like an effort to stampede the United States into war once again. - Jan Schakowsky

before the US Congress. The Israeli prime minister was greeted with smiles, handshakes and even hugs as he made his way to the podium. The speech that followed was interrupted numerous times by ovations from those in attendance. In the aftermath, the praise Netanyahu received from his American supporters can only be described as effusive. By any measure, and on the basis of perception alone, this was a triumph.

Was it?

The “first draft of history” has rightly focused on the substance of Netanyahu’s claim – that the P5+1’s nuclear negotiations with Iran will not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but will instead “guarantee” that they get them. Netanyahu argued that the US proposal will leave Iran with “a vast nuclear infrastructure”, will allow Iran to develop an atomic arsenal after a period of ten years and will spur Iranian aggression. “This deal won’t be a farewell to arms,” Netanyahu argued. “It would be a farewell to arms control.”

So this, then, is history’s “first draft” – an Israeli prime minister came to Washington to warn his nation’s closest ally against negotiating a pact with an intransigent enemy, was warmly greeted (with 35 ovations), and provided a searing argument against a policy initiative being promoted by a controversial president with whom he has had a (let us say) tense relationship.

But what is most startling about this “first draft” is that it is already being rewritten, and even by those with a long history of support for Israel. While these judgments were predictably divided along partisan lines (Republicans generally praised the speech, while Democrats criticized it), the criticisms were among the harshest, and most personal, ever issued against the leader of a nation viewed as an ally.

Nancy Pelosi’s remarks garnered the most attention. The former Democratic House Speaker described Netanyahu’s speech as both condescending and insulting. “As one who values the US-Israel relationship, and loves Israel,” she said, “I was near tears throughout the Prime Minister’s speech – saddened by the insult to the intelligence of the United States as part of the P5+1 nations.”

One of Netanyahu’s statements that Pelosi found most insulting, a Capitol Hill staffer noted, came when he singled out Secretary of State John Kerry for criticism, claiming that Kerry (or rather, as Netanyahu said, “my friend John Kerry”) had “confirmed last week that Iran could legitimately possess” 190,000 centrifuges enriching uranium by the end of the nuclear agreement. But that’s not what Kerry said. What he said was that “[I]f you have a civilian power plant that’s producing power legitimately and not a threat to proliferation, you could have as many as 190,000 or more centrifuges.” Kerry has, in fact, been quite specific in his views on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, saying that its 19,000 centrifuges are too many. Pelosi, this staffer said, “viewed the Kerry reference as pure vitriol. This went well beyond politics. This was personal animus.”

Netanyahu’s Kerry reference wasn’t the Israeli prime minister’s only tonal mistake. His description of Iran as a nation with a “voracious appetite for aggression” left many of his listeners, including those who supported America’s controversial and costly war in Iraq, squirming. In 2002, Netanyahu brazenly claimed that overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime would “transform that society and thereby begin too the process of democratizing the Arab world.” Twelve years, 4,000 American lives and one billion dollars later, that prediction struck many US lawmakers as offensive – and worrying. “What I heard today felt to me like an effort to stampede the United States into war once again,” Jan Schakowsky, another Democratic congresswoman, who boycotted the speech, said.

But more crucial than either Netanyahu’s claims about Iran’s nuclear programme, or even the sometimes bitter reaction to his speech, is the palpable sense that there has been a fundamental transformation in the US-Israel relationship. While this shift has not been a part of history’s “first draft” (and is not the kind of thing that can be caught on camera) it seems all too obvious, if largely unstated: an Israeli prime minister has abandoned his nation’s traditional ties to the American Jewish community’s mainstream progressive values – and tied his nation’s future to the political success of a Bible-thumping, evolution rejecting, climate change denying, interventionist and largely evangelical American political movement.

That is a stunning political shift – and a terrible miscalculation.