U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides said Tuesday that President Joe Biden will invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House soon, in the wake of Netanyahu’s decision to pause judicial reforms.
Nides, identified by critics as the “arsonist-in-chief” backing protests against the reforms, said the invitation would come soon. Netanyahu is set to address a “democracy summit” hosted by Biden by video this week.
Biden had declined to invite Netanyahu to the White House, despite meeting very quickly with each of the two prime ministers who preceded him in 2021 and 2022, and who had displaced him after the 2021 elections.
Netanyahu won elections last year and put together the largest majority coalition Israel has seen in recent years, backed by nationalist and religious parties and committed to reforming Israel’s left-wing judiciary.
The reforms aim to increase the power of the democratically-elected legislature relative to the judicial branch — which, unlike the U.S. judiciary, has effective control over appointments to the bench, among other powes.
The Israeli left held demonstrations, riots, and strikes that brought the country to a standstill and nearly triggered a civil war. Netanyahu paused the reforms Monday to allow an opportunity for negotiations.
The Biden administration, like the Obama and Clinton administrations before it, has taken a hostile approach to Netanyahu, whom Democrats see as an obstacle to their foreign policies on Iran and the Palestinians.
Netanyahu had reacted to the White House snub by telling members of his Cabinet that they were not allowed to meet their U.S. counterparts until he had received an invitation, as Israel’s democratically-elected leader.
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.
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