Anything but speechless

After months of waiting, Tuesday night finally saw Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu step up to the bully pulpit of the US Congress and deliver what many have taken to just referring to as The Speech.

Given all the Super Bowl-esque hype in the lead-up to the speech, it’s no surprise that coverage of Netanyahu’s screed against Iran and the nuclear deal with the ayatollahs merits massive amounts of ink in the Hebrew press on the morning after.

And while the coverage is a mixture of straight reporting, reactions, analyses and personal takes, most of Israel’s pen-jockeys aren’t exactly making like US lawmakers and standing up to cheer every other word of the prime minister.

Most papers, but not all. There’s always Israel Hayom, which — let’s call a spade a spade — would have likely praised the speech even if it consisted of Netanyahu humming the theme song to “Sanford and Son” for 40 minutes. (“Channeling Winston Churchill, the prime minister brilliantly transported American lawmakers back to the Cold War, a time of fear of nuclear annihilation, but hope for the future.”)

Alas, Netanyahu’s speech included no humming, but instead focused on opposition to the nuclear deal being formed between Washington and Tehran. Like a synagogue president when Saturday-morning services go on too long, most papers skip the news and go straight for the kishkes, which in Israel Hayom means heaping praise upon Netanyahu with a flurry of panegyric commentaries on the “historic address.”

“We saw yesterday the supporting congress members,” Boaz Bismuth writes. “We heard the robust rounds of applause that preceded Netanyahu. The White House is not far from Congress. We can assume that Obama heard them. Obama knows we are not alone. America, his America, is on our side.”

The paper also devotes four whole paragraphs to the reactions of congressmen who all have only the best to say about the speech (Lindsey Graham: “Netanyahu could not have come to us at a better time”). In fact, readers will have to slog until the last page of the nine-page package for a graf buried inside a story to get any idea that some in America, like some guy named Barry Obama, were not enamored of the speech.

Not so in Haaretz though, where President Obama’s dismissal of Netanyahu’s philippic is front and center in the top headline. Taking their cue from the president, the paper’s commentaries run the gamut from calling it terrible to the worst thing ever.

US correspondent Chemi Shalev, for instance, says the speech was “good, but destructive,” doing wonders for Netanyahu and the GOP, but bupkis for actually moving the conversation on Iran.

“Netanyahu’s speech, superbly delivered as it may have been, was no game-changer. The ultimate decision about Iran’s nuclear future still lies, as it did before, with Ayatollah Khamenei in Tehran and not with Netanyahu and Congress in Washington. If the Iranians decide to accept the proposals currently before them, it’s hardly likely that its opponents in Congress would be able to face down a determined president. And if by chance they do, Iran will have an easy time accusing Netanyahu and the Jews of sabotage and this time, especially if the resulting impasse deteriorates to armed conflict, Americans might ultimately agree,” he writes.

The paper’s Yossi Verter, not exactly known as a master of the subtle, ratchets up the rhetoric one step further while trying to get into the head of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and turn him against Netanyahu.

“To illustrate his visions of doom, Netanyahu employed all the biggest villains throughout history: from Haman, through Hitler to Ayatollah Khamenei. The Nazi scourge merited special attention, via the inclusion in his speech of Nobel prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who got to sit next to the distinguished wife of the prime minister,” he writes. “Wiesel seemed a bit uncomfortable with the loud applause he got. Maybe he thought in his heart that it was a bit much for the leader of the strongest country in the Middle East and beyond to stand before Congress and warn of a second Holocaust lurking for the Jewish people.”

Aside from making sure we know how Haaretz’s editorial staff feels, the paper also gives front page play to the domestic response, including opposition leader Isaac Herzog’s volley that the speech was ineffective, and minister Naftali Bennett’s response to Herzog and his lefty buddies accusing them of “shooting arrows at the prime minister’s back at such a critical moment.”

While Haaretz and Israel Hayom both seem firmly rooted in their camps, the populist Yedioth Ahronoth lives up to its billing and actually offers a diversity of views, even if they represent less a conversation than the bedlam of everyone trying to get a word in.

Leading the pack is Nahum Barnea, who, with a front seat to the action, tries to wrangle together the various emotions and reactions to the speech swirling around Washington.

“’A spectacle,’ responded one top White House official to the speech. How angry are you all, I asked him. He thought about how to respond. It’s not easy for officials of the strongest power in the world to speak with their own emotions, all the more so not in anger,” he writes. “Even so, members of both houses of Congress received Netanyahu with much affection, way more than protocol, way more than acceptable courtesy dictates. This was true mostly on the Republican side: Netanyahu is one of them. But was also true for the Democrats. … Netanyahu’s speech, which aroused not an insignificant amount of excitement in Israel, was broadcast only by the cable network in the US, and was out of the headlines within an hour. He also disappeared from the lawmakers’ agendas. They have other things to discuss: the Homeland Security budget, Hillary Clinton’s hidden emails, and more.”

American politicos aren’t the only ones who can’t focus solely on Iran. Sima Kadmon writes in the paper that with the speech behind him, Netanyahu will now have to return home and deal with all the supposedly small change he has avoided until now.

“Netanyahu has just one problem now, that he is coming back to Israel,” she writes in the understatement of the year. “Waiting for him here are all the issues that he wants to push aside, to keep off the agenda. Annoying issues like housing prices, the cost of living and the state comptroller’s reports.”

Taking the idea and running with it, Alon Pinkas notes that on top of all that, the prime minister will also have to deal with all the damage done to his ties with the US, which Pinkas says may be enough to push Netanyahu out of office.

Why hasn’t Netanyahu tried to foster better ties with Obama, he asks. “Since Netanyahu wants to hurt the US president in service of his Republican friends, après lui le deluge,” he answers. “Since Netanyahu is a Republican before being prime minister. Since he thinks he has the power to sculpt and engineer American politics – a power that has never proven successful. The morning after isn’t today. The morning after – when the usefulness or damage of the speech and the circus around it will be put to the test – that’s the morning of March 18.”