Bibi’s Propaganda Coup Is Israel’s Strategic Blunder

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is betting the farm on one card in the Iranian nuclear poker game. He is alienating the United States, the most important protector the Jewish state has.

Benjamin Netanyahu has never projected a particularly religious image, but before embarking on his journey to Washington on what he described as a “fateful, historic mission,” he made a stopover visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. In Orthodox Jewish tradition, he left behind a note in one of the crevices in the wall on which he had written down for what he was wishing. Number one on his list was most likely that he be re-elected to his position on election day two weeks from now. For the 65-year-old Netanyahu, the goal of getting a fourth term has taken precedence over everything else. No trick is too crude, and no gesture too meaningless that he would resort to them in order to get re-elected.

He’s even willing to risk damaging Israel’s relations with the United States, Israel’s principle protector. Those relations had gradually worsened in the Obama era and are now at a historic all-time low point. Not that there haven’t been previous affronts: Netanyahu snubbed Biden on the vice president’s trip to Israel last year and has likewise snubbed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and even President Obama himself on previous occasions, each time over Israel’s continuing settlement construction in the occupied territories, and also over talks with Palestinian authorities. After the most recent Gaza fighting, the ceasefire is in shambles with little chance of resurrection. The United States puts the main blame for the failure of Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace initiatives directly on Netanyahu.

Just as Kerry was about to meet with his Iranian counterpart in Montreux, Switzerland, to discuss details for a possible solution to Iran’s nuclear program, the squabble with Netanyahu dramatically broke as a parallel showdown in Washington. Netanyahu has said it is his sworn duty to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. It is a claim that has been his credo for years, always accompanied by loud trumpet fanfares and expressed with the deepest pathos. In 2012, prior to a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, his claim was accompanied by a cartoon-like bomb with a burning fuse. Expect something in that vein when he speaks to Congress for the third time, something that has already produced a major rift between Jerusalem and Washington. The tensions have also spilled over to the AIPAC conference, the annual meeting of Washington’s most significant Jewish lobby seen as a rehearsal for Netanyahu’s speech before Congress.

The U.S. Congress rewarded Netanyahu’s last speech with 29 standing ovations. This time, some chairs will be empty due to a boycott brought on by those protesting the Republican Netanyahu tactic of granting Netanyahu a public forum with maximum global echo effect in the midst of the Israeli elections. Prominent figures, such as Biden and Kerry, will not attend the speech pleading previous commitments, and there will be no invitation to the White House from Obama – an unprecedented occurrence in the history of Israeli-U.S. ties. Beyond that, the president is also angry because Israel leaked details of the ongoing nuclear negotiations to the public in an attempt to sabotage the talks – an intentional breach of trust.

Bibi Netanyahu, a former diplomat and politician, who understands Washington and New York better than any other, has miscalculated once again. He backed the wrong horse in the 2012 U.S. presidential elections by betting on Mitt Romney, and as early as 25 years ago, Secretary of State James Baker temporarily declared him persona non grata in the United States because of public criticisms he leveled.

He apparently forgot any lessons learned from that. Disavowed by his own military and intelligence services on Iran’s nuclear capability question, and in view of his wife Sara’s escapades along with the pressures brought on by his splintering political support, he is counting on a short-term propaganda campaign as Israel’s savior. That’s a grave strategic error on his part: Israel doesn’t have so many global allies that it can afford to treat its main ally so shabbily. Whatever the outcome of the Israeli election, Netanyahu has to look forward to living with Barack Obama for almost two more years. And after that, he may have to live with Hillary Clinton.