On Wednesday night, Prime Minister Netanyahu met for an hour with Eric Cantor (R-Va), the incoming House Majority Leader. Ben Smith has all the details here, but the statement issued after the meeting is a doozer and bears highlighting.
"Eric stressed that the new Republican majority will serve as a check on the Administration and what has been, up until this point, one party rule in Washington," the readout continued. "He made clear that the Republican majority understands the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and that the security of each nation is reliant upon the other."
Veteran observer of U.S.-Israeli relations Ron Kampeas said he found that statement "an eyebrow-raiser."
"I can't remember an opposition leader telling a foreign leader, in a personal meeting, that he would side, as a policy, with that leader against the president," Kampeas wrote at JTA's blog -- an interpretation which Cantor's office later disputed to Kampeas. (For my part, I detected in Cantor's statement on the meeting an effort as well to be a bit more restrained and statesman-like -- the nod to the United Nations -- than the usual partisan campaign fare of a hardcharging politico now moving into a Congressional majority leadership position that may require more diplomatic guidance than he needed as minority whip.)
Kampeas also characterized the one-on-one meeting between the prime minister and the lawmaker as unusual, adding that he has "it on good authority that as late as last week, Bibi's people were at pains to deny that such a meeting would take place."
