Outgoing U.S. Ambassador Tom Nides claimed in an interview Monday that Israelis wanted America to interfere in its internal politics, as he criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reforms.
The Biden administration has been seen as siding with Israel’s opposition parties against the reforms, though many of the reforms parallel existing practice in the U.S., where Biden has considered more radical changes.
The first of Netanyahu’s reforms passed an initial parliamentary vote on Monday. It would bar judges from using the justification of “reasonableness” to block state actions — a power even some judges admit is excessive.
Protesters clashed with police in the street, and left-wing military reservists vowed not to show up for duty. But after several months of negotiations with the opposition led nowhere, Netanyahu’s party began pressing ahead.
Nides made his extraordinary comments in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, where he openly justified the kind of interference in Israeli domestic politics that Americans would reject if it were the other way around:
President Biden and his ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, had urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to slow down and seek a consensus with the political opposition on changes to the country’s Supreme Court, with protests paralyzing the country last spring. It is unusual for a U.S. administration to weigh in on matters seen as purely domestic, but Nides said the overhaul raised questions about Israel’s democratic credentials and the U.S.-Israeli bond, which he called as close as family.
“I think most Israelis want the United States to be in their business,” Nides said in his only interview with U.S. media before the former banker returns to the private sector. “With that sometimes comes a modicum of a price, which is articulating when we think things are going off the rails.”
“One of the messages I sent to the prime minister was to tap the brakes, slow down,” Nides said. “Try to get consensus.”
Nides has been called the “arsonist-in-chief” for his role in encouraging the Israeli opposition, which has at times brought the country to a near-standstill with mass protests in Tel Aviv and strategic sites like the airport.
Earlier this year, Nides promised Biden would invite Netanyahu — after months of delay — to the White House if the prime minister postponed the reforms. But Biden broke that promise, and he has yet to invite Netanyahu.
Nides summarized his accomplishments in two years as ambassador to Israel as having “made life just a little bit easier and better for the average Palestinian.” He praised Mansour Abbas, an Israeli Arab who leads an Islamist party that opposes the existence of the Jewish state, but which nevertheless joined a coalition government that ousted Netanyahu in 2021 before the former prime minister won in 2022 at the head of a right-wing coalition.
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 recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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