Fox News commentator Geraldo Rivera accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Friday of damaging the U.S. relationship with countries in the Middle East, adding in his remarks that he has long warned that the former commando turned lawmaker is bad news for America.
“If I were President Obama, I would have sent Bibi Netanyahu a congratulatory postcard by snail mail on a form written ‘congratulations on your recent election,'” Rivera said Friday morning on “Fox and Friends.” “It is the appropriate thing to do to someone who has absolutely insulted the American constitutional system.”
Netanyahu delivered an address recently before a joint meeting of Congress, urging U.S. lawmakers to oppose any deal between the White House and Iran that would allow Tehran to go nuclear. But Netanyahu’s speech was steeped in controversy before he uttered a single word as the Obama administration accused Republicans in Congress of going over the White House’s head with their invitation to the prime minister.
Netanyahu has “caused a division in the U.S./Israeli relationship that has never existed before,” Rivera said. “And then for Bibi Netanyahu to run the campaign in a way that I believe was, to its core, made a racist appeal to Israeli hard-right voters to come out because these droves of these Palestinians are going to vote!”
In the final days of the Israeli election, which saw Netanyahu emerge victorious against his opponent Isaac Herzog, the prime minister warned voters that left-wing groups were conspiring to bus Arabs to the polls, a warning seen by many in the U.S. media as explicitly racist.
“I sat in this very seat over the years and I looked at that camera and I said that Bibi Netanyahu told me to my face that there will never be an independent Palestine on his watch,” Rivera said. “Bibi Netanyahu revealed his true self in this election.”
