On March 3, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will appear before a joint session of Congress in Washington and will try to explain to the 435 representatives and 100 senators — or at least those who won’t be absent for the speech — about the danger of the agreement with Iran now being worked out by the United States and the other powers conducting negotiations with it.
In ordinary times, Israeli citizens would be proud of the invitation for their prime minister to speak before a joint session of Congress, and this is the third time it’s happened. But this time sharp criticism has been leveled at Netanyahu in both Israel and the United States, and he is accused of cooking up electoral mischief with the speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner. According to this argument, Netanyahu wants to speak before the joint session, two weeks prior to the general election in Israel on March 17, to win votes from those who would be impressed by the event, while Boehner will use this opportunity to virtually stick a finger in President Barack Obama’s eye, and at the same time to get some additional Jewish votes in anticipation of the 2016 presidential and congressional elections.