As Israel’s ambassador Ron Dermer is about to leave his Washington posting after seven years, he recaps the challenges and triumphs of a transformative term
Even measured against the crises that defined the Netanyahu-Obama relationship until then, it was a confrontation like nothing that Washington had seen.
Tension between then-president Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu had been building for months over the emergent Iran Deal when the news broke: Bibi would confront the US president in his own backyard, with a protocol-defying speech to a joint session of Congress to sound the alarm.
As the March 2015 event approached, the administration pointedly noted that Obama wouldn’t be watching. White House sources spoke of an unprecedented interference in American politics, and the media kept a ticker of Democrats planning to boycott the joint session amid talk of an embarrassingly empty plenum.
But it was a full House that a taut-faced Bibi addressed, and as he began, the deep voice started to work its magic. “We’re an ancient people,” he intoned, turning to history. “Tomorrow night, on the Jewish holiday of Purim, we’ll read the Book of Esther, of a powerful Persian viceroy named Haman, who plotted to destroy the Jewish People some 2,500 years ago. But a courageous Jewish woman, Queen Esther, exposed the plot.
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