Florida Gov. and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis on Tuesday denounced U.S. President Joe Biden over his failure to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House.
“Biden meets with dictators of countries such as Venezuela but snubs the democratically elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is not how you should treat an ally,” the presidential hopeful noted on Twitter.
Biden has been widely criticized for neglecting to invite Netanyahu to Washington. Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman recently told JNS that his failure to do so was “despicable.”
In an interview published by The Wall Street Journal on Monday, outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides expressed concerns about Netanyahu’s plans to reform the country’s judicial system, revealing that he had urged the premier to “tap the brakes, slow down.”
Nides is set to depart his position this summer after two years in the post.
“I think most Israelis want the United States to be in their business,” the diplomat claimed in his parting remarks, adding that “with that sometimes comes a modicum of a price, which is articulating when we think things are going off the rails.”
DeSantis slammed the comments as “disrespectful” and false.
The Biden administration has repeatedly clashed with Israel’s government, crossing the line in the view of some critics when the president weighed in on Israeli politics, expressing hope that Netanyahu “walks away” from the judicial reform plans.
Over the weekend, Biden sharply criticized Netanyahu’s coalition in a CNN interview with Fareed Zakaria, calling it “one of the most extreme” Israeli governments he’s ever seen.
Furthermore, in May, it was reported that the Biden administration even demanded that Israel shelve its judicial reform plans in exchange for American support for a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia.
