Long before moving into the White House, President Biden compared the relationship between the United States and Israel to that of close friends. “We love each other,” he said, “and we’re crazy about each other.”
The United States and Israel are currently in one of the craziest phases of their usually tight but often turbulent 75-year partnership.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to rein in the judiciary has become the latest point of contention as he pushes first part of his package through the Israeli Parliament on Monday, defying widespread protests and repeated expressions of caution from Mr. Biden.
What’s different about this moment is that the rift has nothing to do with the foreign policy and national security issues that often fuel disagreement, such as arms sales, Iran’s nuclear program, territorial claims or the long-standing push for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Rather, it concerns a strictly domestic issue within Israel, namely the balance of power and the future of freedom in a historic bastion of democracy in the Middle East.
The conflict between the friends led to complex cooperation in other areas where the two allies had common interests. For months, Mr. Biden refused to invite Mr. Netanyahu in Washington, which prevented at least some meetings between lower-level officials. The president relented last week and agreed to meet at some unspecified time and place in the United States this year. But he felt compelled to issue two public statements clarifying that he had not changed his mind about Mr. Netanyahu to limit the power of the courts even if the prime minister is tried for corruption.
The debate over the prime minister’s plan, which brought hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets of Israel over the weekend in the latest month of demonstrations, has also spilled over into the Jewish community in the United States, at a time when rising partisanship threatens to undermine American support for Israel.
“People left of center are as concerned or more concerned about this in general than people right of center,” said Nathan J. Diament, executive director for public policy for the Orthodox Union, one of the nation’s largest Orthodox Jewish organizations.
“There are many people in the American Orthodox community whose point of view is sympathetic or supportive of the reforms,” he added, noting that his community leans more politically conservative, “but are nevertheless concerned about the divisiveness the process will cause.”
Still, he and other longtime advocates and analysts said they remained confident the relationship between the United States and Israel would endure. After a liberal Democratic congresswoman called Israel a “racist state,” the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution declaring the opposite to be true. Only a handful of Democrats boycotted President Isaac Herzog’s speech last week to a joint session of Congress, and most others gave him a standing ovation.
Robert B. Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the fight over the judicial plan was “the fight of the century” within Israel, but it did not really affect relations with the United States in a profound way. “It’s pretty controversy lite,” he said. “In historical terms, this does not begin to rank as a US-Israel crisis.” Instead, he said, “it’s really a family feud.”
The United States and Israel have had one of the world’s closest partnerships since the founding of the Jewish state in 1948 and recognized minutes later by President Harry S. Truman. But conflict is in the DNA of the relationship from the beginning. Every president — even Israel’s most ardent supporters — has clashed with Israeli prime ministers at one point or another.
Despite recognizing Israel, Mr. Truman to sell the new state weapons, as did his two successors. Dwight D. Eisenhower forced the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Egypt after the Suez crisis in 1956. Ronald Reagan resented Israel’s lobbying against its high-tech aircraft sales to Saudi Arabia. George HW Bush was so opposed to Israel’s settlement plans that he suspended $10 billion in housing loan guarantees.
Mr. Netanyahu has been at the heart of many disputes over the past few decades. When he was deputy foreign minister, his public criticism of the United States in 1990 prompted an angry Secretary of State James A. Baker III to block Mr. Netanyahu at the State Department. At the moment Mr. Netanyahu became prime minister, Bill Clinton was so turned off after their first meeting in 1996 that he asked aides afterward, “Who is the superpower here?” using an expletive for emphasis.
Barack Obama and Mr. Netanyahu, who has never been warm, was further alienated when the Israeli leader delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress to criticize American efforts to negotiate a nuclear agreement with Iran. Even Donald J. Trump, who bent over backwards to give Israel almost everything on its geopolitical shopping list, finally broke with Mr. Netanyahufirst on the disagreement over annexation and later on Israeli congratulations to Mr. Biden on his victory in the 2020 election.
The relationship of Mr. Biden to Mr. Netanyahu has scratched the surface in recent years. Mr. Biden once said he had Mr. Netanyahu was given a photo with an inscription using his nickname: “Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you say but I love you.” As vice president, Mr. Biden was reduced to a visit to Israel by an agreement announcement. But Mr. Biden later insisted that he and Mr. Netanyahu is “still friends.”
In some ways, Mr. Biden’s approach to Israel differs from his modern predecessors. Although he reaffirmed American support for a two-state solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, Mr. Biden is the first president in decades not to pursue peace talks, an acknowledgment that there is no short-term hope for success.
That by itself should be a relief to Mr. Netanyahu, who has long resented American pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians. But Mr. Netanyahu was outspoken in his criticism of Mr. Biden’s efforts to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran, as Mr. Biden called Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet “one of the most extreme” he already saw.
Judicial changes are the latest sore point. When Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at a celebration of Israel’s 75th anniversary at the nation’s embassy in Washington last month, just two words in her speech described shared values — “independent judiciary” — prompting Foreign Minister Eli Cohen to say he had not read the plan. Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition, recently lamented that because of Mr. Netanyahu “the United States is no longer our closest ally.”
For all that, Mr. Satloff said he did not believe Mr. Biden was “looking for a fight” with the Israeli leader — leading to last week’s invitation. “My sense is that the administration has come to the conclusion that this tactic of preventing a presidential meeting has run its course,” he said.
However, Mr. Biden did not think much of the judicial reform package, until Thomas L. Friedman, the New York Times columnist, was summoned to the Oval Office last week to say that Mr. Netanyahu should “seek the broadest possible consensus here.” He offered another statement to Axios on Sunday, saying “it seems the current judicial reform proposal is becoming more divisive, not less.”
Aides insist that Mr. Biden is not trying to engineer a particular outcome in the domestic politics of an ally. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said the president was only offering “fair but straightforward” advice.
“It’s not about us dictating or lecturing,” Mr. Sullivan said in a brief interview after an appearance last week at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. “This is about us strongly believing that the foundation of our relationship is our common democratic values.”
Other Democrats also said it’s appropriate to weigh in with a friend. The massive street protests “should be a warning to the elected leaders in Israel and I hope to give them pause,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and a close Biden ally.
But some Republicans blamed Mr. Biden for meddling in a local issue. “Maybe he knows more about the judicial system and is comfortable telling the Israeli people what to do,” said Senator James E. Risch of Idaho, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee. “I don’t think that’s any more appropriate than they should be telling us how we should vote on the Supreme Court here.”
In the American Jewish community, the issue has not generated the same passion seen on the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
“People who are very involved in organized world Jewry have certainly been activated by the proposed judicial reform, but I don’t think it has taken hold broadly in the American Jewish community,” said Diana Fersko, senior rabbi at the Village Temple, a Reform synagogue in Manhattan.
Rabbi Fersko, the author of a book on antisemitism to be released this summer, said the issue is complex and noted the deep differences between Israeli and American society. “I don’t think the Jewish American community needs to be overly involved in this,” he said. “But I think we have to have a deep belief that the state of Israel will find a path forward.”
