A top aide to President Obama is defending the White House’s decision not to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the Israeli leader visits the U.S. at the invitation of House Speaker John Boehner.
“Our view is that, as a traditional matter, we have avoided getting in the middle of our friends’ — even our closest friends, like Great Britain or Israel — getting in the middle of their campaigns,” White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“Given the proximity of this visit [by Netanyahu] to that election in Israel, we just think it doesn’t make any sense for us to have a meeting, so that’s how we’re going to treat it,” McDonough said.
Netanyahu’s visit has been the subject of intense debate in Washington. Democrats have said it was inappropriate for the House speaker, a Republican, to unilaterally invite the head of state of another country to address Congress; Republicans have argued that the Obama administration has allowed the American friendship with Israel to falter and unwisely has begun talking with Iran, which hates Israel, about nuclear weapons.
Netanyahu is slated to speak to Congress on March 3. Israel will hold its elections two weeks later, on March 17.
Despite signs in the press of fractures in what was once a rock-solid friendship, McDonough said the U.S.’s relationship with Israel remains strong.
“Here’s the way the president has always seen the U.S.-Israel relationship, as above partisan politics, something that is fundamentally in our interest, and so that’s how we’re going to treat this, irrespective of how this thing goes back and forth,” McDonough said, later adding, “We’ll continue to support our ally.”
As for a recent quote in the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz, attributed only to an unnamed senior White House official, saying “there will be a price” for Netanyahu’s acceptance of Boehner’s invitation, McDonough said, “Look, I don’t know who made that quote — that’s not my position, that’s not the president’s position.”
