“Terrible Mistake”: Leading Israelis Say Netanyahu’s Invite to Address Congress Rewards Bad Behavior

AMY GOODMAN: In Washington, D.C., thousands of protesters are planning to march on Capitol Hill today as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of Congress as the death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza tops 39,100 — and expected to be much higher.

On Tuesday, 400 Jewish activists, including over a dozen rabbis, were arrested during a sit-in inside the Capitol to protest Netanyahu’s visit and to demand an immediate U.S. weapons embargo on the Israeli government.

Dozens of Democratic lawmakers are boycotting Netanyahu’s speech, including Senators Dick Durbin, who is the majority whip, Chris Van Hollen, Jeff Merkley, Patty Murray, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who spoke Tuesday.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Netanyahu is a right-wing extremist and a war criminal who has devoted his career to killing the prospects of a two-state solution and lasting peace in the region. He should not be welcomed to the United States Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: Maryland Senator Ben Cardin will preside over the Senate during Netanyahu’s speech, after vice president, presidential candidate Kamala Harris declined to go.

In the House, Democratic Congressmember Rashida Tlaib called for Netanyahu to be arrested and sent to the International Criminal Court. In a statement, she said, quote, “Netanyahu is a war criminal committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” unquote.

New York Congressmember Jerry Nadler, the most senior Jewish member of the House, said he’ll attend Netanyahu’s speech out of respect for the state of Israel, but Nadler said, quote, “Benjamin Netanyahu is the worst leader in Jewish history since the Maccabean king who invited the Romans into Jerusalem over 2,100 years ago,” Nadler said.

A number of prominent Israelis have also criticized congressional leaders for inviting Netanyahu. Last month, The New York Times published an essay headlined “We Are Israelis Calling on Congress to Disinvite Netanyahu.” The essay was co-authored by six prominent Israelis, including former Israeli President Ehud Barak and former Mossad Director Tamir Pardo.

Another one of the co-authors joins us now. David Harel is the president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and a professor of computer science and applied mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He’s joining us from Rehovot, Israel.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Harel. Why do you think it’s wrong for Netanyahu, your prime minister, to address this joint session of Congress?

DAVID HAREL: Good afternoon here. Good morning over there.

I think Congress has made a terrible mistake in inviting Netanyahu. First of all, he does not represent the majority of Israelis. He clings to power because of a coalition which includes some very, very extreme people. We feel deeply, and many, many Israelis feel, that the actions of this government are bringing Israel downhill to the point that we may be losing our country. It’s not just a crisis. It’s not just some things that are happening that we are not happy with. We actually feel that the existence of the country, that we so love and all six of us have served for many, many decades in various capacities, is at a grave risk of collapsing the country down, down to nothing.

At the very, very least, we feel that such an invitation to Netanyahu should be — should have been contingent on his doing essentially three things. Returning the 120 hostages home, there was a way to do that six, seven, eight months ago. There’s a way to do it right now, which he seems to be pushing off, time after time. The second thing is to stop the war in Gaza. We here in Israel are bleeding daily, with members of the military getting killed almost daily. And I don’t even want to mention the scores of civilians in Gaza that have died and keep on dying. This war has to stop immediately. It should have stopped a long time ago. And the third thing, he should have called for elections. There is a clear majority of around 60, 70% of Israeli citizens who want elections to be called. I mean, if these three things were to take place, I would understand an invitation for Netanyahu to speak at Congress.

But right now the citizenship at large has lost faith in him and his government and their actions. And we feel — in fact, let me quote you a father of one of the hostages, I think it was yesterday or today in Washington, who said — and this is a very nice term — he said what Netanyahu is going to be doing in Congress is a political theater. He has really one main goal, and that is to speak before Congress to get the ovations — that always come with the act — and to strengthen his base in Israel. And by the way, strengthening the base in Israel might, sadly and terrifyingly, have the consequence of the war being prolonged even further and the return of the hostages being delayed even further, and that includes, of course, some of the hostages who are U.S. citizens. So, in any case, it’s not only kind of a farce or a political theater, as this person said, but it’s also something that might have very bad additional consequences on the situation here rather than making things even better.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Harel, what has been the reaction within Israeli society to your letter, especially in light of the fact that just last week the Knesset overwhelmingly voted to reject a two-state solution and Palestinian statehood?

DAVID HAREL: Yes. Well, first of all, to your last point, what I failed to mention, and I’ll mention now, is that there’s really two things on the table right now that Netanyahu has to decide upon. One, of course, is the deal, that is very, very similar to the one he himself put forward some weeks ago, for returning the hostages. And the other is that would come together with some kind of normalization of the relationship with Saudi Arabia, letting a Palestinian setup rule Gaza and — this comes to the point that you just made — making the possibility of moves toward a two-state solution much more viable than they seem now. So, it’s not just a one act or one war or one hostage problem. This thing touches upon a much more global and significant issue of perhaps moving towards the so badly needed steps to peace in the Middle East.

As to the reactions here, well, of course, we got some flak from people who thought that — not only people who disagree with the contents of our essay in The New York Times, but people who say, “Even if you are right, you should not be washing your dirty laundry outside of the country.” Some people said, “These problems should have been solved within the country. You can raise your alarm and your voice here, but not outside.” And to that, I have two things to say. One is, Netanyahu himself goes abroad to voice his opinions, to put forward what he believes in, often to put forward things that are incorrect, in order to garner support. And if he and his government can take their laundry outside of the country and show what they want, then there’s no reason why ordinary citizens like ourselves should not be able to do so.

We’ve also, however, got a lot of support. I mean, I have hundreds of mails and WhatsApps and telephone calls following that New York Times guest essay that we wrote which support us, and some people even saying that the courage needed to do that is tremendous. I don’t know about courage. What I can say is that out of the six people who authored this essay, I’m the only one who holds a position and gets paid by the government, as president of our academy. And in that sense, I do want to say that it wasn’t easy for me to decide to join this effort and actually to lead the writing, in a sense. I could have said, you know, “No, I have this role, and I shouldn’t be doing this.” But I think the situation is just so terrible and a danger to the state of Israel, and therefore also to the Jewish people at large, is so devastatingly alarming that I would be willing to give up anything, including my post at the Israel Academy, in order to voice what I think is the absolute truth outside. And in terms of laundering dirty laundry outside, you know, this is not just dirty laundry. The situation is terrible. And, you know, sometimes you need a foreign-made washing machine to help clean your laundry. And I’m not saying this as a joke. And this is one of the reasons that we decided to do this.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor, you mentioned that you’re president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, which has urged academic institutions around the world to resist calls to boycott research institutions and scientists in Israel. Could you explain why?

DAVID HAREL: Yes. Well, it was actually — let me say, there are three narratives that I identify when I try to listen to the music that you hear on campuses in the United States and also in some places in Europe, you know, the riots, the slogans. And if we want to bring this down to the real essence, there are three things that you can hear people chanting or saying or shouting. One is antisemitism, which, very simply put, is, you know, let the Jews disappear somehow, to put very mildly. The other is anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism, which is almost the same thing, which is that the state of Israel disappear somehow. And I’m putting this mildly, too. And the third is anti what Israel is doing or what the Israeli government is doing. And I go around, at the top of my voice, in Israel and abroad, fighting against the first two of these. Whatever Israel is doing, and however much I disagree with what is happening in Gaza and the way our government is carrying itself, including internally, the judicial reform, the attacks on academia and on cultural institutions, that is no reason at all to call for antisemitism or even to call for the Israeli state to disappear. So I will fight with all my might against those two things, antisemitism and anti-Israelism. But I will also do whatever I think I should do personally as an Israeli citizen to bring about a better government around here with better things.

As to boycotts on science, science is universal. It’s borderless. I do not collaborate with a colleague in Britain or United States or France or Germany because I am a mediocre scientist and the person over there is a better scientist. We collaborate because collaboration, international collaboration, is the essence of science, especially in the natural and exact sciences. And boycotting Israeli science is really damaging science in general.

You know, just to give an example which I like to give, recently, Ada Yonath, a Nobel Prize chemist at our institute, Weizmann Institute, who deciphered the structure of the ribosome, she did not do her work alone in her attic. She collaborated with several collaborators in Europe. She did her work using international grants from international bodies that grant research money. And what’s even more important, the results of her research are not just going to bring about improvements locally. I mean, her work is poised to help medicine in general. It’s going to help not only me, but also you and people everywhere around the world.

Boycotting science has the opposite effect, because scientists and humanity experts and intellectuals, they very, very often lead the battle against fascism, against fake news, for reasonable and logical thinking, for critical thinking. And if you weaken science, you not only weaken — if you weaken science in Israel, you not only weaken science in general, but you weaken the kind of logic and critical thinking that is needed in order to counter the bad trends that one sees not only in Israel these days, but throughout the world. So, the other thing I go around asking for is to stop these boycotts. There’s no need for them. There’s no point in them. They’ll only do harm globally.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Harel, do you agree that the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris, is correct in not presiding over today’s joint session of Congress that Netanyahu will be addressing?

DAVID HAREL: Definitely. She’s definitely right. In fact, I don’t want to take any credit whatsoever, but our essay appeared a month ago, and since then, there have been a lot of follow-ups by Israelis calling for members of Congress not to appear, you know, to kind of boycott, if I may use the same word that we just used a few minutes ago, to boycott his speech in Congress.

I’m very happy that Kamala Harris will not be sitting behind him and having to clap every time he says something for which he will get some kind of ovation. I’m very happy that something, I presume, between 50 and 100 members will not show up. And I am happy that there will be protests outside the Capitol to protest his invitation and to protest his speech. And if we have made a minor, modest contribution to that by voicing our opinion a month ago, then I’m very happy about that.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor David Harel, we want to thank you for being with us, president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, professor of computer science and applied mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, speaking to us from Rehovot, Israel. We’ll link the New York Times article you recently co-authored, “We Are Israelis Calling on Congress to Disinvite Netanyahu.” Co-authors of the essay include the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the former Mossad Director Tamir Pardo.

Coming up, on Tuesday, 400 Jewish activists, including a dozen rabbis, were arrested at a sit-in at the Capitol to protest Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. Back in 20 seconds.