President Barack Obama has been very kind to the most right-wing Israeli government in history.
The Obama administration, conjointly with Congress (in a rare act of bipartisan solidarity) has provided above and beyond the package of billions of American tax payer dollars in military aid, standard diplomatic immunity at the U.N. security council, plus, aside from some posturing during the very beginning of his presidency, has all but left Israel to do as it wishes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). This has translated to egregious violations of international law by Israel and further Palestinian dispossession and bloodletting. It is unclear whether Obama’s reluctance to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is due to his administration’s fatigue with Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s disagreeable personality and hopelessly corrupt government, or due to U.S. financial and military interests in sustaining the impasse.
Nevertheless and in spite of Obama’s unprecedented generosity, Bibi has disrespected the U.S. President on numerous occasions, most recently in a speech before Congress in a failed bid to derail the Iran nuclear deal. Some interpreted Netanyahu’s flagrant attempt to sabotage Obama’s work as an ugly expression of racism toward the first black President. Coincidentally and in another barefaced act of racism, two weeks after his speech to Congress Netanyahu falsely claimed Arab voters were coming out “in droves,” in a last minute appeal to promote voting for his Likud party. Ironically perhaps, “Likud” means “unity” in Hebrew.