In the battle now raging between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Bibi) and the Republicans’ approach and that of US President Barack Obama and the Democrats, a moment of comic relief occurred April 5: for one instant, Netanyahu’s photo was published by the Associated Press with the notation "(R)," as if he were a Republican senator. This was a Freudian slip that was found by Israeli blogger Tal Schneider and quickly shared on Twitter, before it was swiftly corrected.
But maybe the error wasn’t so fundamental? Netanyahu is a Republican in all of his being. This fact has been instilled and percolated everywhere, even in Israel. This week a nimble Israeli Web surfer named Roy Taragan invented a brilliant new moniker for Bibi: “Republikudnik,” a hybrid that came into being by grafting the Republican Party, which now controls the US Congress, and the Israeli right-wing party, the Likud, which controls Israel. This is the equilibrium of mutual assured destruction as of now: Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry on one side, and Netanyahu and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner on the other.