NETANYAHU WAS brought up in the US. There he attended high school and university. There he started his career.
He does not need advisers on US affairs. He considers himself the smartest expert of all.
He is no fool. Neither is he an adventurer. He bases himself on solid assessments. He believes that he is able to win this fight.
You could say that he is an adherent of the Walt-Mearsheimer doctrine.
His present moves are based on the assessment that in a straight confrontation between Congress and the White House, Congress will win. Obama, already blooded by other issues, will be beaten, even destroyed.
True, Netanyahu was proved wrong the last time he tried something like this. During the last presidential elections, he openly supported Mitt Romney. The idea was that the Republicans were bound to win. The Jewish casino baron, Sheldon Adelson, poured money into their campaign, while at the same time maintaining an Israeli mass-circulation daily for the sole purpose of supporting Netanyahu.
Romney "couldn't lose" - but he did. This should have been a lesson for Netanyahu, but he didn't absorb it. He is now playing the same game, but for vastly higher stakes.
WE ARE now in the middle of the fight, and it is still too early to predict the outcome.
The Jewish pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, supported by other Jewish and Evangelical organizations, is marshaling its forces on Capitol Hill. It's an impressive show.
Senator after Senator, Congressman after Congressman comes forward to support the Israeli government against their own president. The same people who jumped up and down like string puppets when Netanyahu made his last speech before both houses of Congress, try to outdo each other in assertions of their undying loyalty to Israel.
This is now done in the open, in an exhibition of shamelessness. Several Senators and Congressmen declare publicly that they have been briefed by the Israeli intelligence services, and they trust them more than the intelligence agencies of the USA. Not one of them said the opposite.
This would have been unthinkable if any other country was involved, say Ireland or Italy, from which many Americans are descended. The "Jewish State" stands unique, a kind of inverse anti-Semitism.
Indeed, some Israeli commentators have joked that Netanyahu believes in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the famous -- and infamous -- tract fabricated by the secret police of the Czar. It purported to expose a sinister conspiracy of the Jews to rule the world. A hundred years later, controlling the US comes near to that.
The senators and representatives are no fools (not all of them, in any case). They have a clear purpose: to be re-elected. They know on which side their bread is buttered. AIPAC has demonstrated, in several test cases, that it can unseat any senator or congressman who does not toe the straight Israeli line. One sentence of implied criticism of Israeli policies suffices to doom a candidate.
Politicians prefer open shame and ridicule to political suicide. No kamikaze pilots in Congress.
This is not a new situation. It is at least several decades old. What is new is that it is now out in the open, without embellishment.
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