A Republican lawmaker who has been a thorn in the side of the Israel lobby said Tuesday that he will not be attending Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress next month, but claimed that his decision to skip the controversial address is not political.
“I will not go, but it’s not to protest,” Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) said on CSPAN’s Washington Journal.
Jones, one of a handful of House Republicans who looks askance at his party’s enthusiasm for overseas military adventurism, said that he isn’t singling out the Israeli Prime Minister, who is expected to make the case that Iran must be aggressively confronted by the US.
“I just don’t go to listen to the foreign leaders. I guess maybe I’m skeptical about what they’re gonna be saying,” Jones said.
“I haven’t been in years, to be honest with you. And it’s not really a protest, I just don’t go,” he added.
Jones has carved out a name for himself as something of an anti-war conservative. He was one of eight House legislators from both parties who voted against additional military aid to Israel as it conducted an often-indiscriminate bombing campaign against the Gaza Strip. He also voted last year against sending aid to Ukraine and a resolution condemning Russia for its “policy of aggression against neighboring countries aimed at political and economic domination”–both policies have been seen by critics of means of ratcheting up a geopolitical conflict between Washington and Moscow.
Jones has been targeted by pro-war neoconservatives and fanatical Israel supporters for his positions on defense issues. During the last election cycle, he fended off William Griffin, a primary challenger heavily backed by the “Emergency Committee for Israel” and other supporters who donated $1.37 million to the cause of unseating Jones. Jones raised only slightly more than $500,000 in his victorious campaign.
Netanyahu’s March 3 speech has been a contentious issue in Washington since it was announced. In late January, Speaker of the House John Boehner revealed that he invited the Israeli Prime Minister to speak to a joint session of Congress about the alleged threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Boehner made the announcement the day after President Obama’s State of the Union, a speech in which he hailed the possible stabilizing effects of his diplomatic outreach to Tehran.
Many Democrat lawmakers have said they won’t attend the speech, claiming that Boehner is infringing upon the executive branch’s Constitutional authority to conduct foreign policy.
The White House also said it won’t meet with Netanyahu during his visit, claiming that it would effectively amount to interference in Israel’s March 17 election. Administration officials cited a policy of not meeting with world leaders in the run-up to national polls. It has also, however, made little secret of its displeasure with the event, and has planned to send senior officials out of the country during Netanyahu’s trip.
Beyond controversy about the timing and origins of Boehner’s invitation to Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister has a long history of making factually dubious claims about Iran. In 1992, he said, according to the Christian Science Monitor, that Iran was “3 to 5 years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.” And just Monday, leaked documents from South Africa’s intelligence services obtained by The Guardian demonstrated that Netanyahu’s 2012 UN address about Iran’s nuclear program contradicted what his own spies believed about Tehran’s capabilities.
