A speech of Churchillian proportions, or not

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to deliver his controversial speech before both houses of the US Congress Tuesday, and there is almost nothing else on the Hebrew media’s mind.

Making no attempt to mask its disapproval of the Israeli leader’s decision to go ahead with his address, Yedioth Ahronoth leads with an op-ed by analyst Nahum Barnea, who warns that talk is cheap and the real test is whether at the end of the day, Iran remains incapable of producing a nuclear weapon.

“The only test for success in Netanyahu’s speech today in Congress is not the number of times his audience will deafen him with their loud applause, but its effect on the terms of the deal with Iran,” Barnea writes. “If on that front nothing changes, what have we done?” he inquires. “We flew 9,000 kilometers and came back with a bust,” Barnea adds, referring to a small statue of former British prime minister Winston Churchill, which will be given to Netanyahu by House Speaker John Boehner later Tuesday.

Not surprisingly, the Netanyahu-friendly Israel Hayom daily takes a more positive approach regarding the prime minister’s address in Washington. “The day of the speech,” the paper’s main headline exclaims in big, bold white letters. “The moment of truth,” chimes in the bright yellow underline.

Top Israel Hayom political writer Boaz Bismuth explains that Netanyahu’s address to Congress is intended to remind US President Barack Obama “Who the bad guys” really are.

“During the era of the Cold War there were two opposing camps which faced each other, the West against the Communist bloc,” Bismuth says. “Today, the world is split into the West against the camp that despises their values. Obama must remember the side Israel is on, and that the Iranian nuclear [program] is a national matter, most certainly not a political one.”

The daily also features an exclusive interview with none other than House Speaker Boehner, who stresses the importance of Netanyahu’s speech and defends his decision to extend a formal invite to the prime minister despite the fact that the Obama administration had not been notified of the move.

“There is no one more suited than Netanyahu when it comes to the ability to come and speak about the threat of Islamist terrorism, and the danger posed by an Iran equipped with a nuclear weapon,” Boehner says. “There is no one more suited than him to speak about this topic with the US Congress and the American people.”

Meanwhile, the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper chooses not to focus on Netanyahu’s preparations for the address, but rather on President Obama’s criticism of the prime minister’s move.

“Obama: Netanyahu’s speech is shifting attention from the battle against [Iran’s ] nuclear [program],” the paper’s main headline reads. Almost unanimously, a slew of Haaretz analysts and political writers offer their commentary on what they call Netanyahu’s “mistaken move.”

US editor and correspondent Chemi Shalev quips that Netanyahu “is no Churchill,” and that aside from achieving rock-star status among certain subsections of the Jewish-American community, the prime minister’s trip is in vain, as actions speak louder than words.

“It is interesting to think what Churchill would have said about the message being reiterated by Netanyahu to the citizens of Israel in recent years regarding the Iranian issue,” Shalev writes. “The British prime minister during World War II spoke of blood, sweat, and tears, and did not strike fear in them by talking about their impending destruction at the hands of Germany.”

In internal politics, Yedioth reporter Yaron Kelner offers another criticism of Netanyahu’s Iran rhetoric, this time from inside an overcrowded Israeli hospital. “Iran? Hundreds of people in emergency rooms do not forget life itself,” Dr. Dafna Mansfield of the Sheba Medical Center says, referring to a recent tweet by the prime minister in which he brushed off the country’s ongoing housing crisis and instead stated that the citizen’s of Israel must focus on the looming threat of nuclear annihilation. According to Mansfield, the stress in hospital wards has reached a nearly critical mass, and if nothing is done to fix the situation soon, the country’s public health infrastructures will simply collapse.

Haaretz breaks a report on Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid, who backed out of a commitment he made before the previous elections to recommend the leader of the biggest party as the country’s next prime minister in any case. Lapid stressed that in the Yesh Atid party’s new guidelines ahead of the March 17 elections, there is no clause which states that the faction will automatically back any candidate, regardless of party size or influence. Officials in the Zionist Union said they took Lapid’s recent statements as an optimistic sign, according to Haaretz, since the Yesh Atid chairman previously indicated he may not back Isaac Herzog’s bid for premiership. The officials add that the inconsistency on Lapid’s part would seem to play into the hands of Zionist Union leader Herzog.

Finally, in a somewhat odd story, Yedioth takes its readers to the Knesset lunchroom, where bakers have come out with a new line of cupcakes in honor of Purim shaped as Israel’s leading politicians and party leaders. “[Jewish Home leader Naftali] Bennett was easiest to make, since his facial features are smooth and clear,” one of the bakers says. “But Herzog, Gal-on and Lapid were the most difficult to structure.” Regardless of one’s political leanings or preferences, a pastry with the face of Bennett or Herzog is probably a tough one to swallow.