netanyahu congress

The strong opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on March 3 is making an important speech even more so. The address, on the eve of a grim nuclear deal with Iran, and against overwhelming political pressure at home and abroad, may be the most important speech on geopolitical affairs since Ronald Reagan’s remarks at the Berlin Wall in 1987. It is also already a turning point in Jewish history.

For Goldberg, Obama can do no wrong when it comes to Israel–and only Israel. In his efforts to cover for Obama, he has fumbled away much of his credibility on the issue. There is not much for Netanyahu to fear from the habitual criticism of a pundit who has so clearly departed from reality. But as an example of how American Jewish liberals are tying themselves in knots trying to reconcile their partisan loyalties with the facts of Obama’s failures on Israel, there is no finer specimen.

There are at least five ways in which Iran has explicitly violated the interim agreement–one hat has been extended twice but has failed to produce anything but more time for Iran to advance to a nuclear weapon.

“I am not here to make the case for war. I am not even here to make the case for new sanctions. You know it well enough. On both sides of the aisle, you have leaders who can speak more powerfully than I about why more pressure is needed, after a year of fruitless talks. No—I am here to ask merely that America be what America is: the leader of the free world.”