U.S. Confronts Tight but Turbulent Relationship With Israel
The friction among friends has complicated cooperation in other areas where the two allies have common interests. For months, Mr. Biden refused to invite Mr. Netanyahu to Washington, which prevented at least some meetings between lower-level officials. The president relented last week and agreed to get together at some as-yet-unspecified time and place in the United States this year. But he then felt compelled to issue two public statements making clear that he had not changed his mind about Mr. Netanyahu’s drive to limit the power of the courts even as the prime minister is on trial for corruption.
The debate about the prime minister’s plan, which drew hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets of Israel over the weekend in the latest of months of demonstrations, has spread to the Jewish community in the United States as well, at a time when rising partisanship has threatened to undermine American support for Israel.
“People who are left of center are worried or more upset about it overall than people who are right of center,” said Nathan J. Diament, executive director for public policy for the Orthodox Union, one of the largest Orthodox Jewish organizations in the country.
“There are many people in the American Orthodox community whose view on the substance is sympathetic or supportive to the reforms,” he added, noting that his community leans more politically conservative, “but nonetheless are worried about the divisiveness that the process has caused.”
Still, he and other longtime advocates and analysts said they remained confident that the relationship between the United States and Israel would endure. After a liberal Democratic congresswoman called Israel a “racist state,” the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution declaring the opposite was true. Only a handful of Democrats boycotted last week’s address to a joint meeting of Congress by President Isaac Herzog, and most of the rest gave him a standing ovation.
Source: The New York Times
