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No more America v. Israel talk until we’ve dealt with the biggest issue for Americans as well as Israelis: the battle in both nations and around the globe of military-industrial interests versus the supporters of democracy and justice.

At home, Bibi Netanyahu may be on his way out thanks to revelations of corruption in his personal and political life. The Israeli prime minister is evidently using public money to keep his family happy: public money is buying thousands of dollars worth of take-home sushi and fancy hairdos. Added to that is the more serious rise in housing costs for Israelis during Netanyahu’s tenure as prime minister. Those issues — probably more than a growing break with the US — are weakening Bibi’s case for reelection in mid-March.

For many Israeli voters, day-to-day issues like the high cost of living and housing can resonate just as strongly as strategic ones like the acute tensions in Israel’s relations with the Obama administration over Mr. Netanyahu’s plans to address a joint meeting of Congress next week and the nuclear talks with Iran.

Mr. Netanyahu is perceived as being weaker than many of his rivals on socioeconomic issues, an element that has turned the election on March 17 into a surprisingly open race, with his conservative Likud party struggling in the polls against the center-left Zionist Union led by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni. …NYT

I bet I’m not the only American who sees the cleansing of our relationship with Israel to be a significant plus for President Obama’s “legacy.”

Meanwhile, Israelis are dealing with a nasty piece of reality: during Netanyahu’s reign, “housing prices shot up by about 55 percent from 2008 to 2013, and they have continued to rise.”

Deficient planning and the limited number of housing starts relative to the growth in the number of households has led to a shortfall of tens of thousands of units and high costs for those that are on the market, the report concluded.

Rents have also gone up by about 30 percent, according to the report, while salaries have not kept pace, increasing only modestly….NYT

The Prime Minister’s Likud party remains strong and with it the likelihood that we haven’t seen the last of Netanyahu. But the much-needed hard line taken by the Obama administration has strong echoes in Israel. “Conservatives” (reactionaries) in Israel and America are taking a significant hit.

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Meanwhile, Israel’s prime minister is trying to get Arab ambassadors in Washington attend his speech on the Hill.

Netanyahu’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, has tried, without success, to recruit Arab ambassadors to come to his boss’s speech, e-mailing them personally to plead for their attendance. Dermer, who is not a trained diplomat, is the man who helped engineer the invitation to Netanyahu to speak to Congress in opposition to President Obama’s (so far theoretical) Iran nuclear deal.

Israeli sources tell me that Dermer in recent days has e-mailed at least two Arab ambassadors, those of Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. He made the case in these e-mails that Sunni-majority Arab states and Israel have a common interest in thwarting a nuclear agreement with Shiite Iran—and that presenting a united and public front on Capitol Hill will help convince Congress to stop the Iran deal before it’s too late. …Jeffrey Goldberg,Atlantic.

Cross-posted from Prairie Weather

Photo: By Benjamin Netanyahu on September 14, 2010.jpg: US State Dept. derivative work: TheCuriousGnome (Benjamin Netanyahu on September 14, 2010.jpg) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons