Since 2008, Republicans have taken every opportunity to portray President Obama as an alien Other who came from Africa without a birth certificate. In accepting Speaker Boehner’s invitation to speak before members of Congress, Prime Minister Netanyahu stepped into a Republican narrative dotted with racial innuendos intended to undermine and delegitimize President Obama. In the larger American context Netanyahu’s visit has become much more than a serious and legitimate disagreement with the president about Iran. In accepting Speaker Boehner’s invitation, Prime Minister Netanyahu has effectively joined the Republicans’ narrative and became part of their effort to undermine the president of the United States. By aligning himself with Republicans to undercut the president Netanyahu linked himself to Right wing media and politicians who are attacking Obama’s political decisions, domestic and foreign as un-American and disloyal. A political narrative that constructs the president of the United States as “un-American” is not where foreign leaders should situate themselves and few have done it until Netanyahu. Now Israel’s prime minister has linked himself with the Republican efforts to un-Americanize the president in a fashion that was displayed last week by Rudy Giuliani.

Netanyahu’s visit to challenge the president has been in the news at the same time that Giuliani made headlines in his remarks of the president as un-American. Giuliani (who was an unsuccessful presidential Republican candidate) said on February 18, at a fund-raiser, “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America. He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country.” Governor Scott Walker, a likely 2016 Republican presidential candidate who sat next to Giuliani was asked whether he thought the president loved America and Walker said, “I don’t know.”

When Giuliani was called on his racist remarks he defended his comments with the following incoherent response, “This isn’t racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism.” Most of the Republican political elite, including the Speaker of the House, have never distanced themselves or condemned the Giuliani’-like utterances nor many other aspersions including the strange insults made by the likes of Sarah Palin. When confronted, Republicans have denied that these kinds of comments are racially inflected. Cultural innuendos, however, are constructed to enable an escape route. Innuendos are designed to have double meanings and provide denials when confronted; in the case of Republicans, offering inferences is necessary because it is no longer polite in public discourse to make openly racist statements.

The covert meaning of their current disguised comments is revealed in actions on the ground as Republicans in many states have passed laws that impact African Americans, which seek to infringe and inhibit the American right to vote freely in elections. A black American president, many of us hoped, would signal a sociopolitical departure from a history of violent segregation; but instead we see endemic racial exclusions and discrimination and unrelenting Republican attacks on a black president.

Netanyahu’s acceptance of the Republican invitation has been described in much of the press and by political commentators in Israel and in the United States as a manipulation on his part to win the elections by portraying himself as the brave leader who is unafraid to challenge the president of the United States on Iran. In the American context, however, it is the Republicans who are the manipulators, who are using Netanyahu and Israel for their own purposes to humiliate the president and his party. Despite their public rhetoric of love for Israel, the fallout of inviting Netanyahu reveals that Republicans are not really thinking about what would be good for Israel. It is a political blunder for Israel to alienate the Democrats and it is disgraceful to place American Jews between their president and Israel. Republicans have nothing to lose by using Netanyahu to insult the president on the international stage. Israel does needs its strongest most powerful ally the president of the United States and it has much to lose.