"Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, said on Thursday that he plans to inviteBenjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, to speak before Congress.
. . .
"Republican support for Netanyahu has remained staunch, despite the death toll in Gaza rising to more than 30,000 in the face of Israel’s continued military action.
“I would love to have him come in and address a joint session of Congress,” Johnson said on Thursday morning, in an interview with CNBC. “We’ll certainly extend that invitation.” "Johnson said it would be “a great honor of mine” to invite the Israeli leader."
So I’m so honored as well that the “Great Man” will deign to visit the U.S. Congress, and take on the evil Biden who withholds modern US weapons, like the 2000 lb. bombs necessary for “precision, guided targeting” to annihilate/exterminate the Palestinian vermin, and avoid civilian casualties, leaving the Israelis with only sticks and stones to do so. (Sarcasm.)
But some controversy has come with Netanyahu’s July 24 visit with, as outrageous as it is to believe, some Democrats planning not to attend! So, it may be time to revisit past Netanyahu speeches to Congress, to conclude as Willmoore Kendall did of McCarthyism: What’s the big deal!
So this is not for those who like to stroll down a “memory lane” of revisionist right-wing history, so stop here if that describes you. But I assume none of them read my emails anyway, as they say they don’t, though they complain of me. So what is their complaint, except for me providing a counter-narrative to their Trumpite “revisionist history,” which I guess is all it takes.
But this is to recall actual, factual, history for those who "can handle it.” For those who can, this is a foretaste of what we will see later in July when Netanyahu shows up in Congress again, with the Republican initiated invitation to him to once again speak to Congress. With a Republican full-house eagerly awaiting him! And only slightly fewer Democrats almost as eager, if any less so, as Netanyahu comes to Congress to denounce a Democratic President again. For, once again, imposing “restraints” upon him (where are those celebrating right-wing “Restrainers,” when the slightest bit of “restraint,” only to abide by a very permissive International Law standard, is requested of Israel? We know where; they’re lined up with Ramaswamy, Vance, and TAC magazine, demanding “No Restraint” on Israel!
There will no doubt be tighter security this time around, under the right-wing fanatical Speaker Mike Johnson, so little likelihood of Code Pink being able to attend and write afterward:
Quote: "The worst part of Netanyahu's speech to Congress was not what he said, but the appalling spectacle of watching our elected officials who literally applauded this bald-faced lie about the West Bank and the other outrageous statements Netanyahu made. It occurred to me that right now when it comes to this issue our Congress is more an outpost of the Israeli Knesset than a representative body of the United States.”
Nor do we have Uri Avnery to once again describe Congress and Netanyahu so accurately, like here:
"And then it came back to me. It was another parliament in the mid-1930s. The Leader was speaking. Rows upon rows of Reichstag members were listening raptly. Every few minutes they jumped up and shouted their approval.
"Of course, the Congress of the United States of America is no Reichstag. Members wear dark suits, not brown shirts. They do not shout “Heil!” but something unintelligible. Yet the sound of the shouting had the same effect. Rather shocking."
Standing up faster, and shouting louder than anyone, will predictably be Republicans, and particularly, Speaker Mike Johnson, if he can from his position on the dais, but also J.D. Vance, establishing or confirming his bona fides as Netanyahu’s (and therefore, Trump’s) most dedicated loyalist!
Here’s more from Uri Avnery, whom we miss so much now:
BLUF: "The huge Israeli propaganda machine was set in motion. The terrible agreement is being denounced from every rooftop. Of course we knew all the time that Barack Obama is an anti-Semite, as is John Kerry. Now we have the proof. "Actually, the play is over. An agreement signed by the entire world cannot be made to disappear with a puff from Bibi. It will be there, even if the US Congress does vote against it and overrides the presidential veto. The world is tired of Netanyahu’s whims. The man got what he wanted, so what now?!”
But then Charles Koch, Peter Thiel, and the Adelsons and Mercers, “elected” Trump, and it did "disappear with a puff from Bibi.” Though it would have as well with Clinton elected (see below, in highlighting). And as it has remained, under fellow Goldwaterite Democrat Biden!
And Trumpite Republican leaders who initiated the invitation to Netanyahu to once again "Preside” over Congress (in person on July 24, instead of constructively, through their joint Republican/Likud Party), will be screeching loudest for Palestinian blood, like the Banshees they are.
We’re in a time-loop, obviously, with incessant calls by both parties for war with the Russians ("The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” allegedly said by James Forrestal while suffering a mental breakdown, just before he committed suicide. If only those similarly suffering would end it the same way, instead of insisting on collective, national suicide!). But see the movie for a view of today's hysteria, before they began to come to their senses, which we’re a long ways from: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8mq25w.
And more Gazan slaughter, with an Israeli subservient Democrat as President, being denounced by the Republicans (but now, Trumpite “anti-Neocon Restrainers :-), poised to take power soon to really turn Israeli Fascists loose, as Trump did before, and will again).
Unfortunately, with the loss of Robert Fisk, Uri Avnery John Pilger, the number of non-sychophantic to Israel’s Fascists journalists is almost zero, with Max Blumenthal Phil Weiss the only two Americans coming to mind.
Money quote from below: "It’s a pity Bibi wasn’t born in New York. Then we could have US President Netanyahu – and stop pretending there’s any difference between the Israeli and American governments.”
We get the next worst thing; Trump was born in New York, and we saw no difference in his Israel policy, and what Netanyahu’s would be. Constrained only by material circumstances in that Iran (and Russia and China) can shoot back! And now we know, so can the Palestinians!
'The difference between America and Israel? There isn't one'
Netanyahu knows he can get away with anything in America – with the same confidence that he can support his army when they slaughter hundreds of children in Gaza
Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sarah left Israel for a 48-hour trip to the US (Getty)
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Uri Avnery is without doubt the most intellectual, philosophical, prescient leftist Israeli seer I have ever met. Like TS Eliot, he has a habit of using the fewest words to tell the greatest truth. Every essay he writes, this reader always says the same thing: Exactly! Yet, for the first time in 40 years, I disagree with the great man.
Congressmen of both parties have grovelled and fainted and shrieked their support for Bibi and his predecessors with more enthusiasm that the Roman hordes in the Colosseum. Last time Bibi turned up on the Hill, he received literally dozens of standing ovations from the sheep-like representatives of the American people, whose uncritical adoration of the Israeli state – and their abject fear of uttering the most faint-hearted criticism lest they be called anti-Semites – suggest that Bibi would be a far more popular US president than Barack. And Bibi’s impeccable American accent doesn’t hurt.
And his aim – to earn votes for himself and to destroy the one foreign policy achievement within Obama’s grasp – will have absolutely no effect at all on Israeli-US relations. When Bibi made himself the laughing stock of the UN Security Council – by producing an infantile cartoon of an Iranian bomb with a red line in the middle, indicating that Iran could build nuclear weapons by the end of 2013 – his charade was treated with indulgence by the American media. These mythical deadlines have been expiring regularly for more than a decade, yet still we are supposed to take them seriously. Obama is struggling to reach an agreement with Iran which would protect the world from any nuclear weapon production by the Islamic Republic.
Bibi wants to destroy this opportunity. He wants more sanctions. He wants to win the Israeli elections on 17 March. He might even bomb Iran – which would bring an immediate military response against the United States. But he’s going to be telling Congress that the entire existence of Israel is at stake. According to Uri, Bibi will be spitting in the face of President Obama. “I don’t think there was ever anything like it,” Uri Avnery wrote this weekend. “The Prime Minister of a small vassal country, dependent on the US for practically everything, comes to the US to openly challenge its President, in effect branding him a cheat and a liar… like Abraham, who was ready to slaughter his son to please God, Netanyahu is ready to sacrifice Israel’s most vital interests for election victory.”
I don’t wish to exonerate Bibi’s cynicism. Even Uri admits that he cannot imagine any more effective election ploy. “Using the Congress of the United States of America as a propaganda prop is a stroke of genius,” he says. But the Prime Minister of Israel knows he can get away with anything in America – with the same confidence that he can support his army when they slaughter hundreds of children in Gaza in the “self-defence” of Israel. Bibi’s speech to Congress will be as disproportionate as his soldiers’ bombardment of the world’s mightiest slum.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after an adress to a joint session of Congress in the US (Getty Images)
And he’ll do just fine. We’re told the Democrats are upset. We are informed that Obama is very, very – really – very angry. But the Democrat presidentess-in-waiting is no problem for Bibi. It was Hillary, remember, who told us last summer that she wasn’t sure it was “possible to parcel out blame” for the Gaza slaughter “because it’s impossible to know what happens in the fog of war”. The media stories may have obscured what was happening. “I do think oftentimes that the anguish you are privy to because of the coverage, and the women and children and all the rest of that [sic], makes it very difficult to sort through to get to the truth.” So the fewer reporters, the closer to the truth about the dead women and children and “all the rest of that”, we’ll all get. No wonder liberal Zionists, according to The New York Times, are worried that Hillary is getting too close to Bibi.
As for the Republicans, well take a look at ‘ol Jeb Bush, promising that all will be a clean sweep if he becomes the US commander-in-chief. There’ll be no focus, understandably, on “the past” – Daddy George and Big Bro George W. But his probable advisers in a future presidency include Paul Wolfowitz, John Hannah (Cheney’s old “national security adviser”), Michael Hayden (who misled Congress about torture) and Condi Rice, after whom an entire oil tanker was once named and then un-named – in other words, the same mangy crew who produced “weapons of mass destruction”, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, trillions of dollars in debt, torture and that infamous “mushroom cloud” (a real “fog of war”, if ever there was one). Columnist Maureen Dowd says that Jeb Bush should be holding to account those who inflicted “deep scars on America”. But why should he? The only thing unmentioned by Jeb is that in 2003, Israel was also producing the same scams about WMD and Saddam’s links to “world terror”.
Bibi won’t be reminding Congress of this on Tuesday, of course. It will be Iran’s WMD and the Islamic State’s links to “world terror” which will have Congress on its feet. It’s a pity Bibi wasn’t born in New York. Then we could have US President Netanyahu – and stop pretending there’s any difference between the Israeli and American governments.
