By Sally Sara: Benjamin Netanyahu has touched down in Washington for an official visit. The Israeli prime minister will be meeting with President Joe Biden and also with the likely Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who analysts say has an opportunity to reposition her country’s approach to the conflict in Gaza. But Mr. Netanyahu’s address to Congress, due to take place tonight, Australian time, will be overshadowed by the domestic US political turmoil. Declan Gooch reports.
Declan Gooch: In Tel Aviv, where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu departed for the United States, the families of Hamas hostages called again for a ceasefire. Shai Dickman’s cousin is still trapped in Gaza.
Shai Dickman: Tomorrow, my prime minister is going to have his speech in front of the Congress. And I’m really hopeful that tomorrow he’s going to make us all feel whole again and tell us that the deal is taking place and that in the next week or two, we are going to see our loved ones.
Declan Gooch: Then in Washington, after the prime minister arrived, hundreds of Jewish anti-war protesters held a sit-in at a congressional building. One of them was Tal Frieden.
Tal Frieden: I’m a Jewish American. My grandparents survived the Holocaust. And growing up, I was always told that we should never let anything like the Holocaust happen again. That’s why I’m here today, protesting the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Declan Gooch: Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on Wednesday US time will make him the foreign leader with the most addresses to Congress, edging out Winston Churchill. Matt Duss is the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy.
Matt Duss : For Netanyahu to be able to come and speak to a joint meeting of Congress is a way to show that, OK, I’m getting a lot of criticism, but I still have enormous political power and influence in the most powerful country in the world.
Declan Gooch: Matt Duss says Mr. Netanyahu may use the speech to argue against a ceasefire, but he says regardless of his message, it’s no longer the biggest show in town.
Matt Duss: President Biden announced that he will be giving a speech tomorrow night to explain to the country his decision not to seek re-election and to step aside in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris, which itself is clearly a move to kind of put a big foot on coverage of Netanyahu’s speech. So if Netanyahu was hoping to have a major victory in terms of coverage for a major speech to Congress, he’s not going to get as much of that as he might have wanted.
Declan Gooch: Neither Kamala Harris nor Joe Biden will be there for his address. But Mr. Netanyahu has scheduled meetings with both of them, and it’s hard to predict how they’ll go. Matt Duss says Joe Biden suddenly has less to lose, while Kamala Harris represents a clean slate.
Matt Duss: I would not expect her to depart dramatically from President Biden’s policy here, but I do think that she benefits from not having been in the driver’s seat of the policy. So she really does have the opportunity now to bring back some really important constituencies in the Democratic Party that have been really angered and alienated by this policy over the past nine months.
Declan Gooch: After days of speculation, the two most senior Democratic congressional leaders, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, have endorsed Kamala Harris, who’s wasted no time hitting the campaign trail. She’s just returned to Washington from a rally in Wisconsin, where she addressed an exuberant crowd.
Kamala Harris: Before I was elected vice president, before I was elected United States senator, I was elected attorney general of the state of California, and I was a courtroom prosecutor before then. In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds. I took on predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.
Declan Gooch: EJ Dionne is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Washington Post columnist. He says the latest polling of registered voters from Reuters and Ipsos has given Kamala Harris a very slim 2% lead.
E.J Dionne: There’ve been a bunch of polls that came out. This one, the latest, shows her ahead. Others show her a little behind. But what they all show, as far as I can tell looking at them today, is that she has gained significant ground on where President Biden was.
Sally Sara: That’s EJ Dionne there, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and columnist with the Washington Post, ending that report from Declan Gooch.
