After President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “walk away” from the proposed judicial reform, a senior Israeli official reportedly accused the White House of “inappropriately intervening” in the country’s domestic affairs.
According to the public broadcaster NPR, an unnamed high-level Israel official slammed the Biden White House for its continued hostility towards Jerusalem despite Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to freeze the planned judicial reform.
“The official accused the U.S. of inappropriately intervening and said it was bizarre for Biden to comment after Netanyahu said he was delaying his proposal,” NPR reported Wednesday.
The judicial reform proposed by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition aims to give the country’s elected government the power to amend the country’s constitutional framework and appoint judges to the Supreme Court, a move bitterly opposed by the opposition parties and left-wing activists.
Writing for NPR, Jerusalem-based correspondent Daniel Estrin reported:
Israel accused the United States of inappropriately intervening in its internal affairs as the fallout continues from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to increase his far-right coalition’s say in how judges are chosen.On Monday, Netanyahu postponed for at least a month — but vowed to resume — an effort to change how Israel appoints judges to the Supreme Court. (,..)Biden told reporters a day later that he was “very concerned” about the judicial proposal. And he said there were no plans “in the near term” for the U.S. to invite Netanyahu to the White House — responding to what was apparently an offhand remark by the U.S. ambassador to Israel that Netanyahu could be invited soon.Later in the day, reporters from mainly U.S. media were invited to hear a senior Israeli official speak — without naming and mostly without quoting the official — with sharper criticism of the White House. The official accused the U.S. of inappropriately intervening and said it was bizarre for Biden to comment after Netanyahu said he was delaying his proposal.
The Israeli response came shortly after President Biden told Prime Minister Netanyahu to “walk away” from his planned judicial reform. “They cannot continue down this road, and I’ve sort of made that clear,” Biden said to the reporters on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Netanyahu responded with a statement saying that “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”
The fact that President Joe Biden has kept up his attacks on Prime Minister Netanyahu despite the freezing of judicial reforms shows that it has nothing to do with his concern for the Israeli judiciary and everything to do with the current Israeli leader.
When it comes to dealing with Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Biden White House is holding on to the legacy of hostility it inherited from President Barack Obama.
Just days ahead of Netanyahu’s expected return to office last December, the news website Politico revealed the Biden administration’s strategy to deal with him. “President Joe Biden and his aides have a plan for how to deal with the far-right, anti-Palestinian tilt of the incoming Israeli government: make it all about Benjamin Netanyahu,” Politico reported on December 20, nearly a week ahead of Netanyahu’s return to power.
“The Biden administration will hold the presumptive Israeli prime minister personally responsible for the actions of his more extreme cabinet members, especially if they lead to policies that endanger a future Palestinian state (…),” the news outlet noted.
Both Presidents, Biden and Obama, view the Israeli leader as a threat to their nuclear deal with Iran. Prime Minister Netanyahu has described President Biden’s bid to revied the Obama-era nuclear deal as Tehran’s “golden paved highway” to a nuclear bomb. He has called the Biden administration’s appeasement of Iran over the nuclear issues a “madness and “height of folly”
Despite the Israeli government’s decision to freeze the judicial reform plan, the Biden administration appears to be at all-out war with Jerusalem. On Thursday, Israel media reported that the Biden State Department “instructed” a NASA scientist not to appear at an academic event in Israel in the wake of the proposed judicial overhaul.
“An astrophysicist with the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been forced to pull out of a conference in Israel amid tensions with the Biden administration over the judicial overhaul,” The Times of Israel reported. “According to a report today in the Haaretz daily, Straughn told organizers of the Israel Physical Society’s annual meeting that she was instructed by the State Department to cancel her appearance,” the news website added.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY