White House: No Invitation Yet for Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu

The White House said Monday that there were no plans to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington, nearly three months after he took office, denying a courtesy traditionally shown to a key U.S. ally.

White House strategic communications director John Kirby responded to a question from a reporter in the briefing room on Monday about a possible invitation: “There’s nothing on the schedule right now, for that.”

Last week, as Breitbart News noted, Netanyahu was reported to have ordered his cabinet ministers not to meet with their American counterparts until the White House extended an invitation for him to visit in Washington.

Netanyahu’s predecessors Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, visited Biden in the White House shortly after they each took office. President Barack Obama famously snubbed Netanyahu on a visit in 2009, making him wait.

On Sunday, as Breitbart News noted, Biden lectured Netanyahu on the need to reconsider Israel’s ongoing judicial reforms, which have been vigorously protested by the opposition and the far left. Biden made no mention of his own radical judicial reform proposals, which he appointed a commission to consider in 2021.

The reforms aim to hold the power of Israel’s judiciary in check. The Israeli judicial system has been described as a “juristocracy,” given the degree to which it has arrogated power to review legislation without authorization.

There has been growing frustration within the Israeli electorate at the legislature’s inability to pass laws that survive the court’s review, and also at the courts’ insistence on reviewing the minutiae of executive decisions.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.