Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will speak to the Congress of the United States for the third time. Winston Churchill is the only other foreign leader to speak three times on Capitol Hill. President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry will return the favor by refusing to meet Netanyahu during his trip.
Between Bibi and Barack reigns pure contempt. George Will, the Washington Post columnist, called Netanyahu "the anti Obama", the nemesis of the American president. The Israeli daily Maariv commented on the way the Obama Administration consistently receives the delegation from Jerusalem: "There is no exercise in humiliation that Americans have not tried with the prime minister and his entourage. Bibi received in the White House the same treatment of the president of Equatorial Guinea".
"A pain in the a..." is the way Obama describes Netanyahu. Obama has been photographed with shoes on the table in the Oval Office while on the phone with Netanyahu to reprimand him on the building of a few houses for "the settlers". When Obama visited Israel, two years ago, he embraced President Peres, but he only shook hands with Netanyahu. The expert on body language, Tonya Reiman, said that Obama shows "contempt in his eyes" for Netanyahu.
And during a previous visit of Netanyahu in Washington, the Israeli prime minister refused to capitulate to the White House's request to resume the negotiation process with the Palestinian Arabs. Obama stood up and said: "I am going to dinner with Michelle and the girls."
There is a crisis between the European Diaspora and Israel as well. The leaders of the French Jewish community, terrified by the massacre at the kosher supermarket and other horrendous cases of Judeophobia, didn't like the invitation offered by Netanyahu to emigrate to Israel, to close the bracket of "exile" in Europe, the "galut".
In the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens writes that "it is time to pack bags for French Jews." It's true, Israel will benefit from this new wave of alyah. But Jerusalem will also lose a pillar in its relationship with Europe, the presence of strong Jewish communities in a continent where anti-Semitism has had a facelift.
A few days ago the Jewish state disappeared from the maps of Harper Collins, the largest publishing house in the English language in the world.
Europe is seriously plagued by Israelophobia. The former Dutch Minister of Economy Herman Heinsbroek just gave an interview in which he argued that it would be good to move the Jews from Israel to the United States: "It was a historical mistake to give the Jews a state in the midst of Islam". This is also the opinion of the European majority.
The proverbial slowness and myopia of Dutch judges vanishes as soon as it comes to the Jewish state (the court has already condemned Jerusalem for having built a wall of defense against terrorist attacks). In March, William Schabas will present the long-awaited UN report on the Gaza war. It will not be a nice report for Israel.
If this trend continues, in a few years the Jewish state will be treated as a "rogue state". Like North Korea. The poison of hatred is circulating in this international resentment.
Everywhere in the West the reality of the Jewish state has been obfuscated, waiting for the disappearance of this vulnerable enclave seen as a mere accident of history.