If the Speaker of the House invites someone, especially a representative of a nation that lost six million people, and who is respected by a large part of the Jewish community in the United States, which considers the US to be the protector of Israel, we should keep our word and proceed with the invitation. Israel is our ally and the sole democratic country in the Middle East. This is not the first time that Netanyahu was invited.

Is our president aware, as chief of a country like ours, that he cannot play with a small country like Israel? After all, Israel as an ally has the right to speak and particularly when its Prime Minister is invited by our Congress and when he feels that the agreements being negotiated with Iran could put the entire Jewish nation in danger. Furthermore, the country in question is Iran, which is not a democratic country and its president already put its own people in a very weird and dangerous situation.  We dislike any terrorist organization but we want to disregard Iran’s activities, and particularly the fact that it has been threatening Israel many times and fighting our ally through its proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc?

Are we discriminating against a democratically elected leader of an ally, because he does not belong to a democratic party, but to a conservative party? If the White House has presumably not properly been informed, it is not the responsibility of the guest. Furthermore our vice president Mr. Biden threatens not to attend when Netanyahu will be speaking to Congress.  After all Netanyahu is a guest of the US Congress and our president is not obliged to receive him, but he should not try to discourage members of Congress from attending. This is a lack of generosity and respect from the part of a great nation like ours. In my view, for Netanyahu, as a guest, it would be inappropriate to cancel the invitation after accepting it.

Copyright 2015 Emile Tubiana