Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suspects that President Joe Biden’s team aims to “overthrow” his government, to judge from Jerusalem’s furious response to a U.S. intelligence assessment of the leader’s political vulnerability.
“Those who elect the Prime Minister of Israel are the citizens of Israel and no one else,” an unnamed senior Israeli official said Tuesday, according to multiple Israeli media outlets. “Israel is not a protectorate of the USA but an independent and democratic country whose citizens are the ones who elect the government. We expect our friends to act to overthrow the terror regime of Hamas and not the elected government in Israel.”
The publications did not identify the speaker by name, but one Israeli outlet emphasized that the statement came from “the most senior Israeli political source you can imagine” — a characterization that would seem to foster speculation that Netanyahu himself issued the statement.
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The thinly veiled accusation came in response to an annual worldwide threat assessment published by the U.S. intelligence community, a document that cast doubt on Netanyahu’s ability to hold power in Israel.
“Netanyahu’s viability as leader as well as his governing coalition of far-right and ultraorthodox parties that pursued hardline policies on Palestinian and security issues may be in jeopardy,” U.S. intelligence officials stated in the report, which was released Monday as senior intelligence leaders descended on Congress for a pair of high-profile hearings. “Distrust of Netanyahu’s ability to rule has deepened and broadened across the public from its already high levels before the war, and we expect large protests demanding his resignation and new elections. A different, more moderate government is a possibility.”
The anonymous statement came in parallel to a public address from Netanyahu, who implied Tuesday that Western officials who claim to “support Israel’s right to exist” are giving the lie to that position through their criticism of his conduct of the war against Hamas.
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“So to our friends in the international community, I say this: you cannot say you support Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself and then oppose Israel when it exercises that right,” Netanyahu said in a virtual address to AIPAC. “You cannot say you support Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas and then oppose Israel when it takes the actions necessary to achieve that goal. You cannot say that you oppose Hamas’s strategy of using civilians as human shields and then blame Israel for the civilian casualties that result from this Hamas cynical strategy.”
