Netanyahu Speech Scandal Blows Up, and 'Soiled' Dermer Looks Like the Fall Guy

posted on: Jan 30, 2015

In the last 24 hours the controversy over the planned speech by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to both houses of Congress on March 3 to rebut the president’s policy on Iran has blown up to a new level. Muted outrage over the invitation has turned into open rage. The opposition to the speech by major Israel supporters across the political spectrum, liberal J Street, center-right Jeffrey Goldberg, and hard-right Abraham Foxman, all of whom say the speech-planners have put the US-Israel relationship at risk by making it a political controversy in the U.S., has been conveyed to the Democratic establishment.

The New York Times and Chris Matthews both landed on the story last night, a full week after it broke, to let us know what a disaster the speech would be if it’s ever delivered. So these media are acting to protect the special relationship by upping the pressure to cancel the speech.

With even AIPAC washing its hands of the speech, it sure looks as if Israel supporters want an exit from this fiasco. Jettisoning Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer or cancelling the speech would seem like a small price to pay in the news cycle next to a spectacle in which leading Democrats are forced to line up against Netanyahu in Washington, even as they file in and out of the AIPAC policy conference and praise Israel to the skies.

Here are the developments. First, the New York Times’ Julie Hirschfeld Davis has a report of unleashed White House fury over the invitation. The story contains the signal that Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador, will be the fall guy for the scandal:

The outrage the episode has incited within President Obama’s inner circle became clear in unusually sharp criticism by a senior administration official who said that the Israeli ambassador, Ron Dermer, who helped orchestrate the invitation, had repeatedly placed Mr. Netanyahu’s political fortunes above the relationship between Israel and the United States.

The official who made the comments to The New York Times would not be named, and the White House declined to comment….

So: The White House gets to appear as if it is protecting the special relationship between the countries from that shmendrick Dermer. The message to Dermer is delivered in scatological terms by former ambassador Dan Kurtzer, a liberal Zionist:

“He has soiled his pad; who’s he going to work with?” Mr. Kurtzer said.

Dermer’s felony was politicizing the relationship between the countries. Hey, no one wants this politicized? The neoconservatives do; they want a battle over Iran policy. So did Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, when he said Obama was taking his talking points from Tehran. The left surely wants the matter politicized; that way our politicians can come out against Israeli settlements and massacres. But the centrist elements of the lobby have cohered over this issue, saying the speech is a big problem, and Obama must keep Israel supporters happy in order to get the prize here: freedom to negotiate with Iran.

Source: mondoweiss.net