Black Power in Washington and the Iran Nuclear Deal: "Jim Clyburn was livid. In February, shortly after learning that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would deliver a speech to Congress criticizing President Barack Obama’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran, the House’s assistant minority leader joined a small group of senior Democrats for a closed-door meeting in the Capitol building with Yuli Edelstein, the speaker of Israel’s parliament. The boyish-looking Edelstein, a member of the ruling Likud party, had flown from Jerusalem to tamp down the furor that erupted over Netanyahu’s planned address.
Usually, meetings between American lawmakers and Israeli officials on Capitol Hill are chummy. But this one was tense. The Democrats felt it was outrageous for a foreign leader to use Congress as a soapbox to challenge their president, and they were particularly incensed by the way Netanyahu and Republican leaders had arranged the speech behind Obama's back. But Clyburn, a long-standing member of the Congressional Black Caucus, went even further, adding an unmistakable racial overtone to Netanyahu's offense. According to aides, the South Carolina Democrat bluntly told Edelstein he regarded the prime minister's upcoming speech as an "affront to America's first black president.”
Since that meeting, the rancor between black Democrats and Netanyahu has intensified. Some 57 Democrats—including most black lawmakers in D.C.—stayed away from the Israeli leader's March 3 speech in protest. Two weeks later came Israel's parliamentary elections, when Netanyahu renounced his support for a staple of U.S. Middle East policy: a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After his reelection to a fourth term, Netanyahu tried to walk back his remark, but Obama said he took Netanyahu “at his word” and would now reevaluate his approach to the Middle East peace process. The U.S.-Israel relationship suffered yet another body blow on March 24 after a Wall Street Journal report quoted unnamed American officials saying that Israel had spied on the Iran negotiations, then leaked cherry-picked details to Congress in a bid to scuttle the talks."
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Usually, meetings between American lawmakers and Israeli officials on Capitol Hill are chummy. But this one was tense. The Democrats felt it was outrageous for a foreign leader to use Congress as a soapbox to challenge their president, and they were particularly incensed by the way Netanyahu and Republican leaders had arranged the speech behind Obama's back. But Clyburn, a long-standing member of the Congressional Black Caucus, went even further, adding an unmistakable racial overtone to Netanyahu's offense. According to aides, the South Carolina Democrat bluntly told Edelstein he regarded the prime minister's upcoming speech as an "affront to America's first black president.”
Since that meeting, the rancor between black Democrats and Netanyahu has intensified. Some 57 Democrats—including most black lawmakers in D.C.—stayed away from the Israeli leader's March 3 speech in protest. Two weeks later came Israel's parliamentary elections, when Netanyahu renounced his support for a staple of U.S. Middle East policy: a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After his reelection to a fourth term, Netanyahu tried to walk back his remark, but Obama said he took Netanyahu “at his word” and would now reevaluate his approach to the Middle East peace process. The U.S.-Israel relationship suffered yet another body blow on March 24 after a Wall Street Journal report quoted unnamed American officials saying that Israel had spied on the Iran negotiations, then leaked cherry-picked details to Congress in a bid to scuttle the talks."
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