Israeli PM Netanyahu Becomes D.C. Darling as Democrats Clamor for Meetings

After years of tense relations, Netanyahu most coveted meeting in D.C.

By Adam Kredo, NEW BEACON


After years of tense relations with the United States under former President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is emerging as one of the most prominent international personalities, according to multiple sources who told the Washington Free Beacon that Democrats, Republicans, and high-level White House officials are clamoring for a sit down with the Israeli leader when he arrives in town on Tuesday.

Senior officials across party lines hope to let Netanyahu know that America has Israel’s back and that years of tension during the Obama administration is just water under the bridge, according to both congressional sources and those close to the Trump administration.

Netanyahu’s schedule is already packed with powwows between President Trump, senior administration officials, and a cast of leading lawmakers on Capitol Hill from both sides of the aisle.

Meetings will center on U.S. lawmakers’ desire to reset relations with the Jewish state. Multiple sources told the Free Beacon that sit downs with White House officials will focus on holding Iran accountable for violations of the nuclear deal, moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and combatting efforts at the United Nations to delegitimize Israel.

Netanyahu already has confirmed a 6:30 p.m. dinner Tuesday evening with newly installed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The meeting will take place inside the State Department.

Netanyahu is expected to meet with Trump and other senior officials Wednesday before heading to Capitol Hill, where he will meet with leading Democrats and Republicans.

Netanyahu is expected to take separate meetings with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), sources told the Free Beacon.

Further meetings could take place with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before Netanyahu travels to the House side of the Capitol for an evening meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.).

There is a strong desire among all parties to show Netanyahu that after nearly a decade of chilly relations during the former administration, the United States is prepared to restore the historic relationship with the Jewish state.

“Netanyahu’s schedule is so full that he literally can’t find time for all the high level meetings people want to have with him,” said one veteran foreign policy adviser who is closely in touch with the White House on Middle East issues. “The truth of this is, it’s nature taking its course.”

Recent polling shows that support for Israel is at an all-time high among Democrats and Republicans. Democratic lawmakers in particular are no longer being pressured by the former administration to distance themselves from Netanyahu and Israel.

“Without Obama trying to force Democratic lawmakers to choose between Israel and the United States nature is taking its course and everyone wants to see how they can help bolster the U.S.-Israel relationship,” the source said. “Voters want to see this.”

One source characterized Netanyahu as the “cool kid in town.”

On Capitol Hill, senior sources focused on the Middle East expect that lawmakers will emphasize a reset in relations with Israel. They also will seek to reassure Netanyahu that key foreign aid packages to Israel will remain robust and fully funded.

“There’s broad recognition that it’s time to turn a page on years of hostility towards Israel from the Obama administration. President Trump and the Republican Congress are focused on strengthening Israel’s security and the U.S.-Israel relationship—not condemning housing projects in disputed territories and pushing anti-Semitic U.N. resolutions,” said one senior congressional aide familiar with the Israeli leader’s travel itinerary.

“This provides a major opportunity for both the United States and Israel to stand up to Iran and all those who seek to defame and destroy the Jewish state,” the source said. “Given the warm relationship between Bibi and Trump, everyone seems upbeat and optimistic about the future of the alliance moving forward.”

Dennis Ross, a veteran Middle East hand who worked for former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, told reporters on Monday that there is a strong desire to cast sour relations between the United States and Israel as a byproduct of the Obama administration.

That, Ross said during a conference call hosted by the Israel Project, is the “overriding message that emerges from this week,”

“Democrats will be anxious to show they’re close to Israel as well,” Ross said, adding that Netanyahu will convey the message that Israel’s relationship is with America as a whole, not any one administration.

February 13, 2017 | 17 Comments »

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17 Comments / 17 Comments

  1. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    xxx

    I have the same problem. I think it’s because one becomes so used to the computer fonts that we don’t realise that they are considerably larger than the text in a book. Also, one generally always reads his computer placed at the same distance from his eyes, generally a bit farther away than a book would be.

    Either or both of these situations is.are probably the cause.

  2. @ Edgar G.:
    Strange and annoying, I can read for hours from a computer screen but reading from paper now gives me eye strain and I have to take a lot of breaks.

  3. @ Edgar G.:
    Anyway, this conversation was productive in as much as I finally found the volume I had been looking for. I think it is a priceless book — though I paid a penny plus shipping or something from Amazon, some years ago. The author absolutely demolishes some of the foreign policy doctrines of the Left — such as that the United States dropped the bomb in order to intimidate the Soviet Union — by showing how New Left Historians edited primary sources and deliberately applied them out of context to make their point that the U.S. was the Imperialist bad guy. Long out of print. I discovered it by following the bibliographical road — as I had been taught — in one of David Horowitz’s marvelously substantiated books (great reading list in there.) Here it is:

    Maddox, Robert James. “The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War. Princeton Universtity Press. Princeton, NJ. 1973. Paperback.

    Aah, Great! I see it was reissued in 2015 in paperback and 2016 in hardcover. Well worth reading. Talk about fake news. Here’s fake history for you. Helped launch a movement. And we are still feeling the repercussions. For example, Leon Panetta:
    Important Aaron Klein article (he’s terrific)
    http://www.wnd.com/2011/06/312429/
    Wikipedia article says he was also U.S. Director of Management and Budget and then White House Chief of Staff under Clinton. This is somebody who tried to use the budgetary process to sabotage the CIA, starting when he was in Congress in the 70s, and then later in the Clinton White House and then took it over and then went to work on the military as Secretary of Defense, the last two under Obama. Somebody who had been openly linked with a pro-Soviet think tank that advocated unilateral disarmament. And people wonder why Trump thinks there’s a problem with the intelligence community? He opposed the Iraq war but remember where the idea that there were no WMDs came from? An ambassador to an unrelated area who got it from his wife who was a CIA agent. And then after the war, we hear about The Islamic State and Syria getting their hands on Saddam’s chemical weapons, and the Iraqi government selling its supply of Uranium yellow cake? Fake History, Fake News, Fake intelligence?

    http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5995.html

    Amazon has it as well, Prime.

  4. @ Edgar G.: But, you didn’t read the copy I typed in — forget 30 years ago. For me, it was 15. So, I got it off the shelf. Also had trouble finding it. Anyway never mind.

  5. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    xxx

    The information I quoted from books including Peters’, were all read at least 30 years ago and some as far back as 50 or more, so surely by attributing a figure to one instead of another writer can be forgiven…..PUULLLEEESE. Yes I DO read 14 or so hours a day, and cover a large amount of content, some of which I retain, and some of which I discard. I read mostly for enjoyment not for “research”. Presently having just yesterday seen the 1935 movie of Vanity Fair, starring Miriam Hopkins, (which I saw many rears ago as well) I am already re-reading Vanity Fair,…….. plus Orczy’s “The Laughing Cavalier” and Sabatini’s “The LIfe of Cesare Borgia”…. Not to forget one by Marjorie Bowen on William of Orange, plus the “Recollections of the Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte” by his long-time valet, Louis Constant Wairey.(already mentioned here a few months ago) Not all at the same time of course, no matter what heroics you might think me capable of….

    Here’s a little tid-bit… According to a newspaper interview in August 1934, with the Governor of Hauran district in Syria..”In the last few months, from 30,000 to 36,000 Hauranese have entered Palestine and settled there”. And, in the 50 years up to 1947, the Arab population increased by 401% in the area where the most Jews settled.

    You can check Wiki and I’m sure you will find the info.

    It’s a well known and documented fact, that where there were only Arabs living in Palestine, the population increase was minimal or decreased, and where Jews were living and working, the Arab population increase was huge. I have actually seen the figures in print, broken down to districts and cities, but please don’t ask for a secondary source. Just take my word for it.

    As I’ve already pointed out I do not have the computer skills that you have and can’t fiddle around on the keyboard like a Mozart. You, being of the computer generation, can, and have that advantage. You don’t have to rely on memory but on Wiki. As always I am open to correction. When I say it’s fact, it IS fact. I DID give you some sources, like the British Colonial Office for ex. and Wiki, where you are completely at home.

    But, as you say, case closed.

  6. I guess I typed all that for nothing because that’s all in there chapter and verse and substantiated and you obviously didn’t bother to read it, you who reads 14 hours a day. Also nomadic Bedouin. Peters says maybe 420,000, Katz says maybe 370,000 half of which were from Gaza which wound up under Jordanian Occupation, so in a way that leaves 150,000 from what became Israel though he didn’t say it like that (that’s the number you attributed to Peters.” Everybody came up with wildly inflated figures from the beginning, UNRWA turned no one away and made no one show id so Arabs came from other countries and also who never left, and the Arabs wouldn’t permit a headcount. So, Katz just cites accounts that count the Arabs registered as living in Israel in 1947, and those in 1949 and subtracts the difference. The only 150,000 figure cited was that was the number by which the numbers were originally inflated. I think somebody just misread. Or it’s the Gaza number, in which case, it’s another way the Arabs are trying to have it both ways. They also don’t count natural deaths. Counting Judea and Samaria and Gaza which Israel lost, obviously, Both Katz and Peters put the refugee count at 420,000 to 650,000, however omitting Gaza, according to Katz, the real number seems to be half the 377,000 which is — damn, I’m lousy at Arithmetic — but it’s closer to 150,000. Close enough. I’m done. OK, case closed.

  7. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    xxx

    The point I wanted to make was that if so many hundreds of thousands of Arabs had fled, (and we actually do know that they were far fewer than tendentiously reported by media and politicians with axes to grind) then, seeing that there were actually 50,000 more Arabs in Israel in 1948, AFTER all the Arabs had fled, when UNWRA got going, it suggests that either not so many as claimed actually fled, or that, assuming that the large numbers had fled, the number which poured into Israel from surrounding countries to get the UNWRA freebies was massive.

    And we cannot avoid the FACT that very many of these “refugees” either didn’t even move from their homes, or at most moved only a few miles away, still in the area.

    UNWRA gave a report, which I saw in Wiki yesterday, that of the original (I think they used the figure of 711,000-a mathematically impossible figure) refugees, only about 30,000 were still alive today…this was in 2012. So how many would there be now. Likely not more than about 15-20,000.

    Typically, the Arabs try to have it both ways, with no cost, everything free, and with no thanks given.

    As a sidenote. The whole cloudy demographic stew was caused by the mere fact that the director of the PA department that dealt with population growth etc, was no less than a brother of Arafat. They made nothing more than guesses at the possible birth rates, themselves based on previously falsified figures, and badly mis-reported the death rates, as well as including certain populations and emigrants more than once in their very speculative “calculations.”

    When I lived in Israel and occasionally went in YESHA, into an Arab store, much of their items were in sacks on the ground, all marked with UNWRA stencils. SELLING them. Also because I was sometimes with an Arab, I found that they were selling UNWRA cards for various rations, and I saw people with bunches of these permits in their hands, displaying them between their fingers, perhaps 20-30 per hand..for sale.

    i alway remember what Meinertzhagen, -a friend of Lawrence-wrote, that the Arabs make poor soldiers but excellent thieves and bandits. He knew his stuff that guy. Romances a bit, it’s true, but a really tough guy, who either knew well, or was related to everybody who counted in the British Nobility and Royalty.

  8. @ Economist: This sudden desire by democrats for bi-partisanship over Israel is new definition of chutzpah.

    clarifying that, imo, PM Netanyahu should NOT waste time meeting with Schumer, who spends every minute obstructing every cabinet nominee, and trash-talking POTUS Trump, all part of the deliberate campaign to delegitimize the entire Trump family.

    Since this meeting has to take place, because Schumer is the Senate Minority leader, maybe Bibi can get Schumer to stop obstructing the floor vote for SecEnergy-designate, Rick Perry, Defender of Jerusalem, a recognition that Schumer will NEVER get.

    “January 31, 2017 “…His nomination sailed through the panel with a 16-7 vote, which included the backing of four Democratic senators.

    Perry’s nomination has so far proven to be the least contentious of the early Trump administration. …”

    https://www.texastribune.org/2017/01/31/perry-confirmation-moves-forward-senate/

    My bet is that the confirmation vote for SecTreas- designate Mnuchin tonight IS because of Netanyahu’s visit. Iran sanctions run thru Treasury.

    This version of the democratic party wants muslim votes.

    Schumer is just trying to keep Jewish donors from screaming at him.

  9. Trump will not be the enemy of Israel. He will be different than Obama.

    Trump does NOT like the Pals unlike Obama. The PA has just started making friends again with the Iranians. This will not go over well with Trump and company. Also will not go well with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Sates.

  10. @ Edgar G.:
    xxx

    Just recalled-for the benefit of Sebastien’s thirst for secondary sources- that the piece of drek I mentioned above as coming from Ha’Aretz, was written by Aluf Benn. His is a name I normally pass over, comsigning it, in the Biblical way, to Ge-Hinnom. but read it because it was on this site and I only looked for the writer when I’d finished the pile of slobber.

  11. xxx

    This report is in stark contrast to the Ha’Aretz article just printed above this one, which disparages and makes Netanyahu comparable to a Court Jew who has to carefully watch his step. He always is careful anyway, but this article is confimation and support for the negative remarks I made on the Ha’Aretz post.

    Let’s hope it’s a true reflection of what’s really happening in Washington.

    I’m not doubting, but you know…”respect but suspect”, the most neccessary Jewish aphorism.

  12. If forced to meet with Schumer, PM Netanyahu should ask whether this sudden desire for bi-partisanship is meant to be as delegitimizing as the SchumerDems’s obstruction to POTUS’ cabinet confirmations.