Harsh criticism, faint praise from opposition on PM’s Washington performance

Opposition politicians in Israel are giving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s performance during his current US trip mixed reviews, with some praising his rhetorical skills and others slamming him for “wasting”  the time of his American hosts. Some criticized him for comparing the Iranian nuclear threat to the Holocaust.

Netanyahu, who is currently in Washington, DC, met US President Barack Obama on Monday and addressed the influential pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. During his speech, he indirectly compared America’s perceived hesitation to undertake military action against Tehran with the country’s decision not to bomb the train tracks leading to the Auschwitz death camp during WWII.

Netanyahu also said that diplomacy and sanctions against the Islamic Republic have so far failed to deliver tangible results and that “none of us can afford to wait much longer” — hinting at the possibility of a preemptive military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Labor lawmaker Daniel Ben Simon said the speech was “one of the most dangerous ever delivered by an Israeli prime minister.”

“No Israeli prime minister has ever tied Israel’s fate to what happened in the crematoria of the concentration camps,” Ben Simon said. “The Israeli superpower of today cannot be compared to the Jewish people in 1942, before there was a state.”

Kadima MK Tzipi Livni, who heads the opposition, told Army Radio that she agreed that a nuclear armed Iran would be an existential threat to Israel, but objected to Netanyahu’s use of Holocaust comparisons.

“The prime mimister is very articulate politician, and yesterday he did a very good job of conveying Israel’s position and interests regarding Iran’s nuclear program,” Livni’s spokesman, Gil Messing, told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. “But the test for any good politician is not the ability to express Israel’s needs but to preserve them.” While Iran is indeed a threat to the Jewish state, Livni rejects any comparisons with the Holocaust, her spokesman said.

Shaul Mofaz, who hopes to unseat Livni as Kadima leader during the party’s upcoming primaries, criticized the prime minister for portraying Iran’s nuclear ambitions as an existential threat to Israel. “Israel is not a ghetto” and should avoid tackling the issue alone, Mofaz, who chairs the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, told Israel Radio on Tuesday morning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLwc9lOxUMU

Meretz chairwoman Zahava Gal-On chose even harsher words to slam Netanyahu, predicting he will have to pay a heavy price for “wasting President Obama’s time.”

Netanyahu told Obama nothing about moves toward peace with the Palestinians, she said. “Obama made it clear yesterday that the U.S. would prevent Iran from becoming nuclear, but Netanyahu did not reward the president for his friendship with answering his question about ending the occupation,” Gal-On said.

During his speech Monday before more than 13,000 AIPAC delegates, Netanyahu pledged to never let Israelis “live under the shadow of annihilation,” which many observers understood as clear reference to a preemptive strike against Iran.

In perhaps the most widely discussed section of his speech, for which he received thunderous applause from the audience, the prime minister read from an 1944 correspondence between the US War Department and the World Jewish Congress, which had been pleading for an American strike against the train tracks leading to Auschwitz.

“‘Such an operation could be executed only by diverting considerable air support essential to the success of our forces elsewhere…..and in any case would be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources,’” Netanyahu said in his speech, quoting the War Department’s response. “‘Such an effort might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans.’Think about that – ‘even more vindictive action’ — than the Holocaust.”

Netanyahu acknowledged that “2012 is not 1944” and that the American administration has asserted it would consider military action to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Yet he unequivocally stated that “when it comes to Israel’s survival, we must always remain the masters of our fate.”