BENJAMIN NETANYAHU’S SPEECH TO AN AMERICAN-ISRAEL CONFERENCE WAS PRECEDED BY THE UNEXPECTED: A TEARFUL APOLOGY BY THE CONFERENCE PRESIDENT FOR DONALD TRUMP’S ADDRESS THE DAY BEFORE.
Group’s president disavows partisan content in speech
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu experienced something American politicians have become all too familiar with — being overshadowed by Donald Trump.
Netanyahu’s video-linked speech Tuesday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s conference was preceded by the unscheduled introduction of AIPAC president Lillian Pinkus. Choking back tears, Pinkus apologized for speeches given Monday night at the annual conference, implying that Trump’s address had violated a non-partisan standard by criticizing U.S. President Barack Obama.
“From the moment this conference began, until this moment, we have preached a message of unity,” Pinkus said. “We have said, in every way we can think of: come together. But ... something occurred which has the potential to drive us apart, to divide us. We say, unequivocally, that we do not countenance ad hominem attacks, and we take great offence to those that are levied against the president of the United States of America from our stage.”
Trump’s speech, which he largely recited from a teleprompter, was actually notable for its low level of invective. A Republican presidential candidate who has mocked Marco Rubio’s thirstiness, Rand Paul’s looks, Jeb Bush’s energy level and Carly Fiorina’s face confined his criticism of Obama to a few tossed-off insults.
“With President Obama in his final year — yay!” Trump said, adding an exclamation not in the text and earning huge applause. Later, diverting from his text again, he called the president “maybe the worst thing to happen to Israel.”
While Trump’s past statements, including his promise to be “neutral” in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, have caused concern among pro-Israel activists, he offered promises in line with what the audience had hoped to hear. At times, he brought the crowd to its feet.
But hundreds of rabbis and others stood in separate groups once Trump took the podium and simply walked out in protest, activists said. Many went directly to locations at the Verizon Center to pray and study Torah.
A D.C. Orthodox rabbi in a prayer shawl who was seated six rows from the front was carried off by security moments after he shouted out once Trump began speaking.
Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, leader of a prominent D.C. Modern Orthodox synagogue, told the Washington Post that he immediately stood, put on a tallis — or prayer shawl — and shouted: “Do not listen to this man. He is wicked.”
AIPAC, already criticized for giving Trump an invitation, decided the rhetoric needed condemnation.
“While we may have policy differences, we deeply respect the office of president of the United States and our president, Barack Obama,” Pinkus said. “There were people in our AIPAC family who were deeply hurt (Monday) night, and for that we are deeply sorry. We are disappointed that so many people applauded the sentiment that we neither agree with or condone. Let us close this conference in recognition that when we say ‘ come together,’ we still have a lot to learn from each other, and we still have much work to do.”
While AIPAC invites candidates and leaders from both the Republican and Democratic parties, and while it discourages protests from the audience, Trump was hardly the first speaker to criticize a sitting president. He was followed on the stage by Ted Cruz, who compared the administration’s deal with Iran to the 1938 Munich agreement that handed Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to Adolf Hitler’s Germany.
Four years earlier, AIPAC allowed Mitt Romney to address the conference by
WE DO NOT COUNTENANCE AD HOMINEM ATTACKS.
satellite, and he went on to accuse the president of “lecturing” Israel and “emboldening” the Palestinians.
But no AIPAC speech had been criticized like Trump’s. Jane Eisner, the editor in chief of Jewish news source the Forward, wrote that she was “ashamed that any of my fellow Jews could applaud” Trump.
“I am ashamed that they would succumb to the pandering lies,” she wrote. “Donald Trump ought to have been received civilly but silently by AIPAC. Instead, the applause spoke volumes.”
Chemi Shalev, a correspondent for Israel’s Haaretz, left the Trump speech in shock and asked how fellow Jews could have applauded it.
“The enthusiastic reception given Trump could very well deepen the fault lines inside the Jewish community that were uncovered over the summer in the bitter clash over the Iran nuclear deal,” he wrote.
Shalev added that “it was good enough to transform Trump from a morally repugnant presidential candidate into a run of the mill contender who deserves as much respect as the others.”