Netanyahu Accepts China Invitation After Biden Snubs Him

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted an invitation to visit Chinese President Xi Jinping , after U.S. President Joe Biden refused to invite Netanyahu to visit the White House since his election last year.

In March, Biden announced that he would not extend the customary invitation to Netanyahu, who won his country’s elections in November 2022, in protest at Netanyahu’s proposed reforms to Israel’s judiciary.

Biden met with both of Netanyahu’s predecessors shortly after they were elected. Ironically, Biden himself has considered judicial reforms, such as packing the Supreme Court, that are far more radical than Israel’s reforms.

Xi extended an invitation to Netanyahu that was revealed on Monday. Netanyahu confirmed to a visiting U.S. congressional delegation that he would visit China in the fall, though the U.S. remains Israel’s strongest ally.

China has sought closer ties with Israel for decades, largely because of Israel’s extraordinary success as a military and technological power — even as it has often backed Israel’s enemies in the region, such as Iran.

That has caused tensions, at times, with the U.S. President Donald Trump successfully pressured Israel to back away from closer economic ties with China, which has begun to spread its global influence to counter the U.S.

But Biden has snubbed the democratically-elected Israeli government, among other allies in the Middle East. And China clearly intends to take advantage of the Biden administration’s hostility to long-term U.S. allies.

In March, China brokered a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran in Beijing, underscoring the failure of the Biden administration to maintain a united front against the Iranian regime and its nuclear ambitions.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.