Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, is greeted by Senate Foreign Relations Chair Ben Cardin, D-Md., as he arrives to address a joint meeting of Congress, at the Capitol in Washington, on July 24.J. Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress has sent ripples of anger across the Middle East, less for what he said than for the fact that Republicans and Democrats in attendance gave multiple standing ovations to a man accused of being a war criminal.
Mr. Netanyahu, who has been accused by International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan of war crimes including the starvation and intentional targeting of civilians in Gaza, received some 40 separate standing ovations during his 52-minute address on Wednesday. Roughly 10 minutes of Mr. Netanyahu’s time at the podium was taken up by applause.
Mr. Netanyahu used his speech to defend the actions of Israel’s army in a conflict that the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza says has led to the deaths of more than 39,000 people. He also called on the United States to stand with Israel as it confronted what he called “Iran’s axis of terror.”
While little of what Mr. Netanyahu said to Congress was new, the rapturous applause from the country’s elected representatives was shocking to many in the Middle East.
Congress “sent a terrible signal” to Israel’s neighbours by giving Mr. Netanyahu a hero’s welcome, said Kim Ghattas, a Beirut-based political analyst. “I think it does not go down well in the region at all to see American lawmakers give Mr. Netanyahu so many standing ovations in the midst of this horrible war.”
“This is a disgrace for American democracy and its institutions,” said Suat Kiniklioglu, a former Turkish MP. He said the scene was only partly redeemed by the fact many Democrats, including Vice-President Kamala Harris, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, were not in attendance on Wednesday. “But the world saw standing ovations for a war criminal.”
Mr. Khan asked the pretrial chamber of the ICC in May to issue arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed by Mr. Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed al-Masri and Ismail Haniyeh. The pretrial chamber has not yet made a decision on whether to issue the warrants.
In his speech, Mr. Netanyahu said the Israeli military had taken “more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history” and said it was Hamas that “does everything in its power to put Palestinian civilians in harm’s way.” He accused the ICC of “trying to shackle Israel’s hands and prevent us from defending ourselves.”
Mr. Netanyahu met with President Joe Biden – who has repeatedly sought to bring an end to the 293-day-old war in Gaza – on Thursday, and later met with Ms. Harris. Mr. Netanyahu was expected to fly to Florida on Friday to meet with Republican nominee Donald Trump at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Mr. Netanyahu ordered the invasion of Hamas-ruled Gaza hours after the Islamist militants invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,100 people, most of them civilians.
He gave no update in his speech on negotiations over the three-phase ceasefire deal promoted by Mr. Biden, which in the first phase would see Hamas release the women, elderly and injured among the roughly 100 hostages it has been holding for more than nine months in exchange for a pause in the fighting.
Mr. Netanyahu has been widely accused of putting his own political interests ahead of the hostages’ lives, choosing to prolong the war rather than accept a ceasefire deal that could lead to the collapse of his far-right coalition government.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sketched a vague outline of a plan for a 'deradicalized' post-war Gaza in a speech to Congress on Wednesday and touted a potential future alliance between Israel and America's Arab allies.
Reuters
There was shock in Israel, too, at the adoration that official Washington heaped on a politician who is extremely unpopular at home. Mr. Netanyahu has faced mass protests calling for him to stop the war and bring the hostages home, and to resign. Polls in Israel show him with a 30-per-cent approval rating.
On Thursday, the Hostage and Missing Families Forum released a statement condemning Mr. Netanyahu for not using his trip to the U.S. to finalize a ceasefire agreement. “The speech and applause won’t erase the one sad fact: The words ‘Deal Now!’ were absent from the Prime Minister’s address,” the statement reads.
The only welcome news for the region was that Mr. Netanyahu did not, as some in Lebanon feared he might, use the speech to signal the start of a major military operation against Hezbollah. There have been daily exchanges of fire between the Lebanese militia and the Israeli military throughout the Gaza war, which Hezbollah says it joined in a show of solidarity with Hamas. (Both groups are backed by Iran.)
The fighting has thus far been carefully calibrated, but has nonetheless left more than 500 Lebanese dead, including 378 acknowledged Hezbollah members, as well as 24 Israeli soldiers and 13 civilians. Tens of thousands of people have been driven from their homes on both sides of the border, and Mr. Netanyahu is under mounting domestic pressure to change the situation enough to allow the evacuated Israelis to return home for the start of the new school year in September.
“We are committed to returning them home. We prefer to achieve this diplomatically,” Mr. Netanyahu said in his speech. “But let me be clear: Israel will do whatever it must do to restore security to our northern border and return our people safely to their homes.”