Netanyahu addressed the Congress. Maybe he should have been the president of the United States
Photo: AFP
Netanyahu's survival speech
Op-ed: The Congress address proved what we all already know, that when it comes to speaking, Netanyahu has no competition. His only problem is his return to Israel, where he will be greeted by all the annoying issues he tried to push aside.
Sara Netanyahu is right. Maybe Benjamin Netanyahu should have been the president of the United States.
But we shouldn't disparage their influence on the Israeli voter. There is a reason why Netanyahu insisted on delivering his speech
in front of both houses of Congress, flying in the face of all common sense. There is a reason why he jeopardized Israel's most crucial interest – its relationship with its only true ally. There is a reason why he set the date of the speech for two weeks before the elections, although the right thing to do from every perspective would have been to wait until after the elections.
One thing's for sure: He would have been much better for Israel as the US president than as the prime minister. Where would he have been greeted with such applause, with such respect? In our Knesset? And he would fit right in there like a whale in the ocean, not like a fish in the worthless water of the Prime Minister's Office aquarium.
The problem is that he isn't. In the meantime, he's only the prime minister of Israel, for the third time, and running for a fourth term – but it's not the pro-Israeli Republicans, the audience which welcomed him with such enthusiasm, not to mention admiration, who go to the polls on March 17.
Congress Address
Ron Ben-Yishai
Analysis: Netanyahu's speech to Congress will not achieve any of the goals he sought, but salvation for Netanyahu may come in the form of Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei.
The senators can leap to their feet and applaud as much as they like, but Tuesday's speech wasn't intended for them. It was intended for the Israeli public, or to be more exact, for that part in the Israeli public that is still undecided. The speech was directed at them, and only at them.
The senators can applaud as much as they like, but Tuesday's speech wasn't intended for them. It was intended for Israel's undecided voters (Photo: AFP)
It was directed at those people who sat in front of the television on Tuesday evening, watched their prime minister and said, "What a king." The speech was born for these people. And for these people, who have the power of leaving Netanyahu in the prime minister's residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem, Netanyahu complicated his relations with US President Barack Obama, who - not Congress - who sets America's foreign policy priorities.
In other words, on Tuesday we witnessed the most glorious survival speech ever heard. And it's not that we didn't know. The Congress speech proved what all of us, both his supporters and his rivals, already knew a long time ago: That when it comes to speaking, Netanyahu has no competition.
And it's not just the perfect English. It's the acting skills. One could easily imagine the prime minister on the Broadway stage, with the resounding tone, the scheduled pauses, the changing facial expressions, the flickering of the eyes and the hand gestures. He doesn’t need any gimmicks. This whole speech is a gimmick. And it doesn’t matter that he failed to say anything new, and didn't even offer an alternative to what President Obama is trying to achieve in the negotiations with Iran. The effects did their job. And as for the military option – well, we are through with that already. We won't start from the beginning now.
Still, we have no reason to be jealous of Isaac Herzog, Tzipi Livni and even Yair Lapid. It's not easy dealing with a speaker like Netanyahu and with a setting like the US Congress. But it's not just that.
In order to understand the differences between the two people running for prime minister, we should have also watched the Zionist Union chairman's speech in the Gaza vicinity in southern Israel. The audience greeted Herzog enthusiastically and applauded after every sentence. Herzog asked them to stop, because it was interrupting the broadcast. Yes, Herzog asked the crowd not to cheer for him. Can you imagine a situation in which Netanyahu hushed applause? Can you imagine a situation in which he didn't stop speaking and didn't wait patiently for the applause to die down?
Netanyahu has only one problem now: On Wednesday he headed back to Israel, where all the issues he wanted to push aside, to remove from the agenda, are waiting for him. Annoying issues like the cost of housing, the cost of living, the two serious state comptroller reports, his wife's conduct and his party's decline in the polls. And Netanyahu, as we know, doesn’t like these issues. When people talk about them, he doesn't forget for a moment about life itself.
It's still difficult to assess the impact of Netanyahu's speech and whether his Congress performance will help the Likud regain some Knesset seats after its ongoing decline. In any event, if the speech does have an impact on the number of seats, it will likely be much faster and effective than the impact on Obama or on the chance to prevent an agreement with Iran.
