Awkward! Netanyahu Congratulates Obama on His Win

Israeli PM Netanyahu was obviously banking on a Romney win. In fact, he all but staked his own political futures on Sheldon Adelson’s mouthpiece taking the White House. Now he’s facing intensified scrutiny over the awkward position he’s placed his country in with their biggest ally. Netanyahu rushed congratulations to the President last night.

Watch here, as PM Netanyahu meets with US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro in Jerusalem to congratulate President Obama. Video via GPO:

To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.

Shapiro can barely suppress his grin as Netanhyau goes through the rather desperate motions of making nice, praising the “rock solid” relationship between Israel and the U.S.. To be fair to Bibi, it seemed that he saw the writing on the wall at the UN conference after Obama gave him and his red line the cold shoulder, as then we saw a subdued Netanyahu suggesting that war was not imminent before the election after all.

What is often missed in discussions of Israel and America is that Netanyahu is not Israel. The relationship between the two allies is stronger than the difficult relationship Obama has with the right wing war hawk. Netanyahu made the mistake of thinking he could push Barack Obama around, and he quickly met with the brick wall that is Obama’s steel core of convictions about how we will conduct our foreign policy.

In polling, the entire world except Pakistan was rooting for Obama to win in last night’s election, so it’s no surprise that other world leaders from Britain, China, France and Russia rushed to congratulate the President. Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted congratulations to his “friend” and in a statement said, “But above all, congratulations to Barack, I enjoy working with him, he’s a very successful American president and I look forward to working with him in the future.”

Netanyahu also sent a congratulatory tweet including a picture of the President and him. Benjamin Netanyahu ‏@netanyahu:

https://twitter.com/netanyahu/status/266088753729249282″ data-datetime=”2012-11-07T08:04:37+00:00

So maybe he’s thinking all is well that ends well. What we are thinking is that all of Sheldon Adelson’s and Karl Rove’s dirty money couldn’t buy American love… Something Netanhayu might want to think about.

Sarah Jones

Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.

Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Connect with Sarah on Post,  Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.