Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu descended on Washington Tuesday full of rebuke for an errant American president. Obama was being too soft on Iran in the negotiations to end its nuclear armaments ambitions. The Israeli leader told members of Congress that he had to intervene because Barack Obama had got it wrong. He urged legislators to do their duty and block whatever deal the president managed to cut with Tehran. Now one might have thought that Americans would not have taken too kindly to a foreign leader stepping into their legislature and lecturing Congressmen on how to do their duty. One might have thought that they would rally round their president when a foreign guest in their country hectored and harangued the occupant of the Oval Office. The very office of president used to attract respect. After all did not Americans rally round the presidency, if not the man, when George W. Bush's dubious win in Florida gave him the White House? But times, it seems, have changed. The sight of US Congressmen bobbing up and down from their seats to give Benjamin Netanyahu repeated standing ovations was curious indeed. This is the sort of patriotic behavior normally reserved for a presidential State of the Union address. Netanyahu strode purposefully to the speaker's rostrum to whoops and cheers from largely Republican Congressmen. Someone who knew no better might assume from the broadcast of Tuesday's joint session that the Israeli premier had come from the Mother Country to straighten out foolish errors in US policy. He had sought no clearance from the White House before accepting a Republican Party invitation to come and speak. Nor did Netanyahu have any plans to find time in his schedule to see Obama. He clearly considered it sufficient to berate the president before legislators and the US public. In so doing, he was demonstrating the power that Israel exerts over the United States. Presidents may come and go, but the US Zionist lobby goes on for ever. If Washington dares to challenge its Israeli master, then Capitol Hill will bend to Zionist will and allow an Israeli leader to jet in and humiliate the president. Obama's two terms have been full of failure and disappointment, scattered with the shards of broken promises, not least on the Middle East. His defenders would argue that once the bickering Democrats lost their Congressional dominance, Obama never stood a chance against a polarized and unbending Republican majority, that was prepared to drive the US to the very edge of bankruptcy in order to get its way. It is now clear that Obama's opponents always had a more fundamental Zionist agenda. Even before the echoes of his seemingly epic Cairo speech had died away, Israel was mobilizing to block and if needs be, destroy Obama. Zionist colonists went to work calling in political favors, dolling out finance and schooling their mostly Republican surrogates in order to demolish the power and influence of the man US voters had just chosen to be their leader. Netanyahu was probably right about the need to maintain strong sanctions to force the Iranians to comply with the obligations under international disarmament agreements. But it would also have been entirely right for Congress to ask him about Israel's own undeclared nuclear arsenal, which Tehran is using as an excuse for its own nuclear program. But no such question was heard from Netanyahu's obedient Congressional subjects, just idiotic cheers and applause.
