The Most Dangerous Ground in the Middle East

The day before Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech on Capitol Hill is a moment to mark what we have several times called the most dangerous ground in the Middle East. That’s the ground between the White House and the Congress. It’s where Mr. Netanyahu will be treading this week in his various meetings — including with the president, vice president, and, at Mar-a-Lago, the 45th president — and his speech to a joint meeting of the Congress.It doesn’t bode well for the prospect of a new Democratic administration that neither the party’s outgoing or aspiring president managed to get someone to Joint Base Andrews to welcome Prime Minister Netanyahu as he alighted from his plane, the Wing of Zion. The only democratic leader in the Middle East landed yesterday to be greeted by staff of Israel’s embassy. The various protocols being cited are unconvincing.Plus, too, it seems that Vice President Harris won’t be attending Mr. Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. She’ll be on the campaign trail. In this she follows the vice president at the time, Joseph Biden, who failed to attend Mr. Netanyahu’s speech to Congress in 2015. In the speech, Mr. Netanyahu offered a warning against appeasing Iran. Senator Kaine didn’t attend either. He went on to be Secretary Clinton’s running mate. He’s skipping this iteration, too. What the American public can take from this is increasingly clear — that today’s Democratic Party is growing uncomfortable welcoming a wartime leader of the Jewish state. Of our two major parties, the Democrats have become the less committed to a defense of Israel, withholding ammunition and seeking to micromanage its conduct of the war. It is more committed to nursing its left flank, where the “Squad” and others are rooting for Hamas.Where does Ms. Harris stand? The Journal reports that she seeks a quick end to the fighting — by definition a victory for Hamas and Iran. Her expression of sympathy with anti-Israel protesters on college campuses, expressed the other day to the Nation magazine, indicates a jangled moral compass. More heartening is the warning by Speaker Johnson that those who disrupt Mr. Netanyahu’s speech will be thrown in the Capitol clink. Our own hope is that all this will give Mr. Netanyahu a sense of liberation as he enters the House chamber Wednesday. It will be the fourth time he’s done so. He’s the only foreign leader to have spoken to a joint meeting that many times. Winston Churchill spoke to Congress three times. The third time, Churchill dilated on, among other things, his early backing of the Zionist idea. Mr. Netanyahu’s speeches sketched themes that are likely to be reprised.The Israeli could start with warm remarks, possibly recognizing an individual, maybe Mr. Biden, with a friendly salute. In 2015 Mr. Netanyahu mentioned Senator Reid, the erstwhile Democratic majority leader, who was then ailing. The Israeli might extol the bipartisan nature of the commitment between Israel and America. In 1996, he got a bipartisan standing ovation when he vowed that Jerusalem would never — never, he repeated — be divided again.Mr. Netanyahu then might mark the danger of abandoning the war aims of retrieving the Israelis and Americans held hostage and destroying Hamas and either seizing its leaders or getting them onto the ferry across the River Styx. Mr. Netanyahu could mark, again, the common themes in our history and faith. In 2015, he spoke of the bas-relief, directly across the House chamber from the podium, of Moses, who brought our most basic laws down from Sinai.If Mr. Netanyahu does meet, as planned, with Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris, or both, we’d like to think they might get into particulars. It will be an important moment. The Democratic Party has drifted to the left of either the American or Israeli people. Ms. Harris, who appears likely to be the candidate, will be running against a candidate who, in President Trump, is a hero on Israel and set in motion a historic peace plan waiting to be finished.

The Most Dangerous Ground in the Middle East

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