Benjamin Netanyahu Is America's Worst Ally [View all]

[Celerity]

The Israeli prime minister continues to insult the Biden administration, which has been the best friend Bibi’s besieged government can ever hope to have.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/benjamin-netanyahu-is-americas-worst-ally



Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, over the past several days, cemented his position as America’s worst ally. In fact, given his behavior, real questions exist whether he is even an ally at all. America has had bad allies in the past. Joseph Stalin, for example, while an invaluable partner during World War II, did immediately thereafter turn on the West and launch the Cold War. (He also happened to be a historic tyrant and brutal mass murderer of his own people.) The alliances with figures like the Shah of Iran, the government of South Vietnam, and our brief cooperative dalliance with Saddam Hussein have also certainly not aged well.

But, in the modern era, no one else is in the class of Netanyahu. He has taken advantage of the long-standing ties between his country and the United States while in turn providing, especially in recent years, very little except damage, burdens, complications, and worse. He ignores U.S. advice and entreaties. He undermines U.S. interests. He has used the support he’s received from the U.S. in the commission of what many believe to be serial war crimes. And to top it all off, he is singularly ungrateful for all the backing he has received.

Further, he compounds all of the above by being a terrible leader who has made multiple monumental errors, promoted extremist monsters to leading positions in his government and, while he was at it, sought to undermine Israeli democracy, committed a variety of domestic offenses in Israel and, at the same time, supported a criminal element in U.S. politics. In just the past week, Netanyahu has frustrated U.S. efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, launched an operation in Rafah that the U.S. has actively and vocally opposed, and, literally weeks after the U.S. led an international coalition that defended Israel in the face of attacks from Iran, said that Israel could never trust “the gentiles.”

In so doing, he has shown himself more loyal to the crazies in his cabinet (upon whom his job depends) than to the U.S. administration that stood up for him during Israel’s darkest hour in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks of last Oct. 7. He has ignored the pleas of thousands of Israeli demonstrators that he step down—given his disastrous record before and since that date. He has flouted requests by the international community to provide further aid for the people of Gaza. (The World Food Programme’s Executive Director Cindy McCain has warned that Gaza is already in the midst of a “full-blown famine.”)

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