Op-Ed: Pray for Netanyahu On This Day of Reckoning

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is hours away from giving the speech of his life. Pray for him to succeed.

Pray for the welfare of Israel. Pray for the welfare of the United States. Both nations are in the same boat. We share the same values.

We share the same perils.

Netanyahu, leading a nation seasoned by the Holocaust, knows what comes when evil goes unchecked. He knows the price and facing Congress on Tuesday he will have to be at his best to persuade lawmakers that, squabbles aside, politics be damned, it’s in the vital interest of both nations to stop Iran from going nuclear.

First the Saturday people, say the ayatollahs. Next the Sunday people, a message that seems to escape President Barack Obama who insists on playing games of tag with imams who mean business. But Netanyahu knows that it’s do or die. His people, Israel, cannot afford to play games.

Israel cannot afford to take chances, cannot risk its safety on a wager, guessing whether Iran’s cards are up or down.

America can lose a war and still survive. No such luck for the Jewish State, which, in addition to Iran, faces imminent threats along all its borders. Islamists have their rockets and tunnels ready to go from Gaza, and ISIS keeps gaining ground throughout the Golan Heights.

The same Islamic State threatens the entire region, the entire world. This is no time for a family dispute between the United States and Israel.

This is no time to get personal and yet Netanyahu’s visit to Congress has been met with hails of derision coming mainly and directly from the White House where sits a president we don’t understand.

He offers patience and respect for Iran, a country run by fanatics. For Israel, our most dependable ally – contempt.

To satisfy his grudge against Israel as a whole and against Netanyahu as a leader, Obama has poisoned the air in advance of Tuesday’s speech. He has dispatched his ministers, John Kerry and Susan Rice among them, to taunt the Jewish prime minister wherever forums are available, and even if the subject is about something else.

Anything to Get Bibi!

Read more here