Joshua Keating in Vox: From a purely visual standpoint, Netanyahu may have gotten what he wanted today: rapturous standing ovations, even if mainly from Republicans. But more than 70 percent of Israelis now say that Netanyahu should resign. His own defense establishment is turning on his handling of the war and he’s under fire over issues ranging from his long-running legal troubles to the controversial question of whether the ultra-Orthodox should serve in the country’s military.
In the past, Washington has served as a sort of relief valve for Netanyahu, a place he could count on strong support, even when his political position looked rocky at home. In that first speech back in 1996, after receiving a five-minute standing ovation from Congress, he quipped, “If I could only get the Knesset [Israel’s parliament] to vote like this.”
Today, though, “the magic is gone,” Nimrod Novik, a former senior Israeli foreign policy official who is now an analyst at the Israel Policy Forum, told Vox. “The fellow that mastered verbal acrobatics to the point that different audiences could hear different messages in the same speech — that’s over. Those who were in awe of his verbal skills now take it with a grain of salt.”
In more than 40 years of coming to Washington, Netanyahu has surely grown used to being a controversial figure. He may have to get used to being an irrelevant one.
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