Democrats split over boycotting Israeli prime minister’s address to Congress
At a time when Democrats are attempting to unify around a new presidential candidate, a foreign leader who divides them — and many Americans — has arrived in the nation’s capital.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the world’s most polarizing leaders, will address Congress on Wednesday. He came to Washington at the invitation of Republican legislators, circumventing the White House, much as he did in 2015 to illustrate his scorn for then-President Obama.
If Netanyahu meant for this trip to heap similar ignominy on President Biden, whom the Israeli leader has falsely accused of holding up shipments of weapons, then he was upstaged by Biden’s momentous decision Sunday to leave the presidential race. How that changes Netanyahu’s game plan, and how the administration chooses to deal with his intrusion into U.S. politics, remains to be seen.
Disagreements over the endgame could doom the Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal if the warring sides aren’t willing to negotiate.
In liberal California, home to large and influential Jewish and Arab American communities, the Netanyahu visit has sown division in the congressional delegation.
Many of the state’s Democrats are expected to join dozens of their colleagues from around the country in a boycott of the speech. Some members have organized additional events Wednesday, including one taking place during Netanyahu’s speech.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the all-but-certain Democratic presidential candidate, will not attend the speech but will hold a private meeting with Netanyahu on Thursday.
Netanyahu has come under blistering criticism for his handling of the war in the Gaza Strip, which began after the militant Palestinian group Hamas attacked southern Israel Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages.
Since then, the Palestinian death toll in Israeli airstrikes, bombings and a ground invasion has surpassed 39,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not specify how many of those are combatants and how many are civilians. There is widespread international agreement that large numbers are women and children.
Biden quickly offered unqualified support for Israel and Netanyahu in October, though as the war has dragged on he has publicly urged the right-wing Israeli government to take better care to avoid civilian casualties and to agree to a cease-fire deal that would also see the release of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas.
Still, Biden’s support for Israel cost him politically at home among key voter constituencies and abroad, where the U.S. is seen as complicit in what some governments argue is genocide in Gaza.
Washington annually gives Israel more than $3 billion in aid, ratcheting that figure up threefold since Oct. 7 with massive weapons supplies.
Netanyahu is expected to use the speech Wednesday to demand more aid and more weapons, without delay or holdups. Biden stopped a single shipment of 2,000-pound bombs this year as Israel was threatening to attack the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where about a million Palestinians were sheltering.
The issue has proved problematic for many Democratic members of Congress. Many draw a clear distinction between support for Israel and support for Netanyahu.
For months, extremist Israeli group Tzav 9 has been blocking lifesaving aid meant for Palestinians struggling to survive in the war-torn Gaza Strip, U.S. officials say.
Ahead of Netanyahu’s speech, Rep. Mark Takano (D-Riverside) was set to be part of a group of lawmakers meeting with Israeli citizens whose family members were kidnapped Oct 7.
In a statement, Takano said he grappled for weeks with whether to attend the address before deciding not to.
He said he believes Republicans gave Netanyahu the platform to further sow division among members of Congress and accused the Israeli leader of prolonging the conflict, ignoring the pleas of his own citizens to focus on bringing home the remaining hostages and rebuffing concerns from the U.S. and other allies about the toll of the war on Palestinian civilians.
“In recent months, I’ve grown increasingly troubled by Mr. Netanyahu’s actions, which have sought to further his own political survival rather than securing the return of hostages and a much-needed ceasefire,” he wrote.
Rep. Mike Levin (D-San Juan Capistrano), who has called for a change in Israeli leadership, said he would nonetheless attend Netanyahu’s speech.
Levin is endorsed by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, an influential pro-Israel group that has launched campaigns across the U.S. to unseat candidates who are critical of Israel’s actions in the Israel-Hamas war.
“Any time an ally — which, Israel is an important ally — I think it’s important that members of Congress attend,” Levin said. “Not necessarily in support of that leader of that nation, but rather in support of the people of that nation and of the important relationship that the Jewish Democratic state of Israel has with the United States.”
Netanyahu last spoke to Congress in 2015 amid a tense relationship with Obama. Vice presidents typically preside over joint addresses, but then-Vice President Joe Biden was traveling and didn’t attend.
That time, the White House wasn’t alerted in advance that Congress had invited Netanyahu to speak, which the administration said was destructive to the relationship between the U.S. and Israel. It was part of Netanyahu’s long campaign to undermine decades of bipartisan U.S. support for Israel and make his policy aims an overtly Republican cause.
Soon after President Trump took office, he reversed decades of American policy by moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the disputed city of Jerusalem. He also recognized Israel’s claim to sovereignty over the Golan Heights, fertile land Israel seized from Syria, and said he approved of Jewish settlements on land claimed by the Palestinians in the West Bank. Most of the international community considers the settlements illegal.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) said before the 2015 event that it was “unseemly” to invite a foreign head of state to speak against White House policy, but that he would be a “gracious host.”
“The strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship has always been at its core a very bipartisan one,” Schiff said at the time. “I think anything that threatens to jeopardize that is not good for the U.S. and is not good for Israel.”
Schiff’s office confirmed he will also attend Netanyahu’s address Wednesday, but did not make the congressman available for an interview.
Other members, meanwhile, were planning to boycott the speech. The office of Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), who has called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, confirmed she would not attend Wednesday. Lee also skipped Netanyahu’s 2015 address.
Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove) said in a statement Tuesday that he decided “after listening to the family members of American hostages held captive by Hamas” — most of whom are bitterly angry at the prime minister — not to attend Netanyahu’s address. Bera urged Netanyahu to accept the cease-fire deal brokered by Biden.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) told NBC last month that he wouldn’t attend.
“I said that if he wants to come to speak to members of Congress about how to end the war and release hostages, I would be fine doing that,” he said. “But I’m not going to sit in a one-way lecture.”
In 2015, dozens of members chose not to attend Netanyahu’s address in protest of how the speech had been politicized.
For a speech about which there was much controversy among Democrats, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first applause line was reserved for an unlikely recipient: Harry Reid, the top Senate Democrat, whom he praised for a quick recovery from a recent injury.
Others, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), then the House minority leader, made clear their disagreements from inside the chamber. The Times reported that when Netanyahu railed against what he considered to be a “bad deal” Obama had brokered with Iran, Pelosi remained seated and threw up her hands.
The protests this week over Netanyahu’s presence extend far beyond Congress. Thousands of Jewish and Arab Americans have converged on the nation’s capital to make their voices heard — protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, challenging U.S. policy in the region and expressing anger over the welcoming of a prime minister who prosecutors at the International Criminal Court would like to arrest and charge with war crimes.
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