Lewd Awakening: Clean Up Times Square by Taxing Naked Nuisances

By: Eli Verschleiser

When I was growing up, Times Square was a seedy place full of adult movie theaters, greasy fast food joints, video game arcades and souvenir shops that – open secret -- also made and sold fake IDs.

In the early 90s, started under Mayor David Dinkins and continued under his successor Rudy Giuliani, the makeover began and all those mom and pop businesses were swept away, replaced by big chain stores and restaurants and media headquarters for Reuters, MTV, ABC and Conde Nast.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg took the beautification a step further in his reign, sealing off a large section of Broadway to traffic and creating a place for tourists to dine, hang out between shopping and matinees and take in the view and excitement from the Crossroads of the World.

Now, the Square is once again in danger of becoming the kind of place you can’t take your kids. It started with the aggressive panhandlers in Elmo costumes, some of whom have displayed unstable and even violent behavior. But even when they behave it’s a nuisance to traverse the area when every four feet a costumed character wants to snap a picture with you for a buck. Mayor Bloomberg wisely recognized the legal reality that you can’t stop people from free commerce or dressing any way they please, and pretty much left the situation alone.

Now comes the scantily clad women who make Vegas showgirls look overdressed. Perhaps inspired by the novelty of the Naked Cowboy, who has been raking in the dough for years (not in fact fully naked), an influx of entrepreneurial women are taking advantage of a 1992 state court decision that there is no fundamental difference between a man or women going shirtless in public. Parents of small children who feel otherwise may enter the area at their own risk.

It’s not just a matter of protecting young eyes. One of the women was reportedly arrested on Sept. 2 on drug and prostitution charges hours after a man accused two others of stealing his wallet. With complaints pouring into City Hall, Mayor Bill de Blasio has decried the situation and even put together a task force to address the problem.

Good luck. Since they are breaking no law, any effort to remove or restrict the women or their overdressed Muppet or superhero counterparts will land the city in court, bringing us back to the days when Mayor Giuliani frequently fought losing battles with civil liberties groups. The women can easily declare themselves performance artists and invoke their Constitutional right to free speech, commerce and assembly.

Bill de Blasio may also see fit to reopen the Square to traffic and let cabs and buses do his dirty work.

But there’s a better way to address the problem: Let them work. But make it expensive. After all, the main appeal of this kind of work is the low overhead.

As we know all too well, the city can tax and regulate almost anything it wants. It already taxes hotels, taxis and street vendors. What if the performers had to get on waiting list for a limited number of permits, with a fee and taxes? Every street vendor in NYC does.

Right now the performance artists are only subject to personal income tax on their earnings. To get their permit renewed, they’d have to show they met their tax obligations.

Bill de Blasio and City Council should earmark the proceeds for specific and related purposes. How about paying for the increased sanitation and police service necessitated by the upswing in tourist activity thanks to these performance artists.

My City Council sources tell me there is no reason this scenario can’t happen. All it would take is appropriate legislation, required registration of the vendors/artists/panhandlers or whatever you want to call them, and then collection. So instead of cops chasing them away or sticking them in penned off areas, the city could just send a team of tax collectors to make sure everyone is paying their share.

Shave 20 percent off the day’s cash earnings, and I can almost guarantee you this pesky population of performers will trickle down in no time. Here’s a chance for bureaucracy to improve quality of life, for a change.

This won’t happen any time soon, since nothing gets passed in City Hall without vigorous debate (as it should be), a bunch of partisan bickering and obstruction and perhaps a lawsuit or two. (Remember, Bloomberg couldn’t quite get his soda ban passed.)

But in the interim there is one unstoppable force waiting in the wings in the coming months that is guaranteed, at least for the short term, to remove the naked nuisance from Times Square and bring some modesty back.

Its called winter.

Originally Published: The Huffington Post

Israel and its Sunni Partners - Should Israel and its Arab neighbors form an alliance ?

By: Eli Verschleiser

Could a nuclear deal with Iran accomplish more than decades of diplomacy in the Middle East and, rather ironically, create new alliances between Israel and Arab neighbors?

That’s a key question as we gear up for the battle on Capitol Hill over President Barack Obama’s controversial pact with Tehran to limit uranium enrichment in return for lifting of sanctions. Critics say the agreement paves the way for a double reward of Tehran— a huge influx of cash and an eventual, unfettered path toward nuclear arms.

Neither the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, nor the United Arab Emirates or for that matter any of the other Persian Gulf states are too excited about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. The role of Iran in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, and the rise of Islamic State terror and the Muslim Brotherhood, have become a much bigger problem for Arab leaders than the tired conflict with Israel. Those countries have a Sunni majority, while Persian Iran is led by rival Shia Muslims.

Iran, of course, is also a major oil rival for the Gulf States and became more powerful following the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

The Saudis have been publicly moderate on the deal but said to be privately angry over it. Epitomizing the old Middle East adage that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the Saudis were reported to have offered Israel the ability to use their airspace to strike at Iran. This is a crucial step in keeping a military option on the table as it would save time and fuel if such a strike were necessary. “The Saudi authorities are completely coordinated with Israel on all matters related to Iran,” a European official was quoted as saying in an Israeli TV report.

Clearly momentum for alignment with Israel in some form is building.

“To all those who think the Persian state, and the regime of the Rule of the Imprudent… the dictatorial fascist Persian regime which controls it, is a friendly country, whereas Israel is an enemy country, I say that a prudent enemy is better than an imprudent one.”

Those words were written by Abdallah Al-Hadlaq in the official newspaper of Kuwait, Al-Watan.

It is not the first time the author has expressed support for ties with Israel. As far back as 2009 he called on his government and other Gulf states to put aside their differences with Jerusalem and forge an alliance against Iran.

But the fact that his column was published in a government daily in a country without full press freedom speaks volumes.

“The state of Israel and its various governments have waged more than five wars with the Arabs, yet never in the course of these wars did Israel think to use its nuclear weapons against its Arab enemies,” Al-Hadlaq wrote. “Conversely, if the Persian state, with its stupid, rash and fascist regime that hides behind a religious guise, ever develops nuclear weapons, it will not hesitate to use nuclear bombs against the Arab Gulf states in the first conflict that arises.”

Were the Saudis to show leadership in rallying other Sunni-led states against Iran it could have a significant impact on a new order in the Middle East.

Furthermore the new coalition could collectively work wonders to get rid of ISIS, as Jordan’s King Abdullah recently declared in a CNN interview that the war against ISIS ‘is our war’. The Iranian nuclear threat and the ISIS threat can top the agenda in this new coalition.

“Iran does have enough politico-military and economic potential to counter-balance Saudi led “Sunni” states in the Middle East and beyond,” wrote Salman Rafi Sheikh in an essay for the magazine Eastern Outlook last March. “It is precisely for this very reason that Saudi Arabia’s anxiety about an agreement has fueled a flurry of intense diplomacy in recent days to bolster unity among “Sunni” states in the Middle East in the face of “shared threats”, especially those emanating from Iran.”

Rafi Sheikh, a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, noted that “this deal is most likely to send political jolts across the entire Middle Eastern political landscape, with Saudi Arabia and Israel standing as the most sensitive areas to bear its shocks; and as such, are most likely to clutch their hands into an alliance against Iran, and by default, against the US ambitions as well.”

There is great potential for Saudi Arabia’s King Salman to rally Gulf states as well as Turkey, Egypt and Jordan to stand up to an Iran that will only become more emboldened with the huge influx of post-sanctions billions and new political bona-fides that will make Tehran bolder.

Increased security cooperation as Iran bides its time for an eventual bomb --after the agreement period, or in the worst-case scenario, in violation of the agreement -- may eventually lead to more nuclear proliferation in the region.

Will that mean a nuclear pact between Israel and its former enemies? That will be a fascinating development that could never have been imagined even a decade ago.

And it will truly be a sad irony if, after nearly 70 years of a solid relationship between the United States and Israel, the Jewish state had to turn to despotic regimes with little or no human rights to solidify its security position, feeling far less than confident that Washington has its back than it has in the past.

However this may simply be the beginning of an Arabic Israeli accord where both groups can begin to understand and accept each other.

Originally Published: The Hill

The Public Figures We Think We Know

By: Eli Verschleiser

“Baby I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream,” sings Taylor Swift in one of her pop songs.

Don’t believe it. The chart-topping Swift is widely known as one of the world’s nicest celebrities and regularly nurtures that image. When a couple tweeted that they became engaged at one of her concerts, she invited them backstage. After an encounter with some fans in a New York Park, she handed them $80 for lunch. And in perhaps her most touching moment, Swift recently donated $50,000 to a preteen fan fighting cancer after seeing her crowd-funding video.

While that donation surely was a smart business move as an investment in her wholesome brand, it shows she indisputably has heart and cares about being viewed that way. She was also branded as a champion of fellow musicians, including thousands far less successful, when she demanded last month that Apple pay royalties during a trial period for its new music subscription service, effectively forcing the world’s richest corporation to open its wallet.

This conflicts with so many other stars who are nightmares in real life and package themselves as wholesome.

For decades Bill Cosby pulled the wool over our eyes, portraying a wise and noble dad on TV, doling out sage advice to his son and daughters, and speaking out on moral issues, when apparently all that time he was a relentless sexual predator who abused women by drugging them.

Accusations against him are now bolstered by the revelation of a deposition in a civil trial, sealed but recently leaked, in which he seems to have admitted drugging women. He faces a civil trail in California, sued by a woman who says he abused her as a teenager.

Cosby’s career is finished, as well it should be. OJ Simpson may get an endorsement deal or TV work sooner than Cosby will.

It leaves me pondering the enigma of the people we think we know, and obsess over, watching their reality shows, poring over gossip magazines and tabloids that feature them, buying their products.

In this post-Howard Stern, social media world that seems constantly at war with boredom, it’s shock value that drives the discourse.

Which brings us to another “Trainwreck.” That’s the name of Amy Schumer’s hit movie, which has propelled her from obscure comedian to a queen of the summer box office with a respectable opening of over $30 million.

It has also cast a spotlight on her early act’s irreverent segments on race and earned some criticism. In one bit she suggested being raped by Hispanic men, and in another she ridiculed African American names and mannerisms.

But was that really a glimpse, as her Comedy Central show is called, “Inside Amy Schumer?”

The key to success for any comedian is to push the envelope, which gets much increasingly harder now that off-color, lewd or bawdy jokes have become de rigueur. The last frontier for shock value is race. But that’s a minefield.

Every comic plays a character on stage and, news flash, very little of what they say actually happened to them or reflects on what they actually believe. It’s clear from the routines that Schumer was trying to inhabit the character of a ditsy, privileged white girl with a blind spot on race and ethnicity, rather than parade the fact that she is one.

The bottom line is that people in general are complex, showing good and bad sides in various occasions. Add in the element of being a public figure and the narcissism that comes with it, and the picture of who they are and what’s in their hearts and souls gets even more murky and complicated. It may well be that living in the public spotlight actually drives people nuts.

Which makes it even more refreshing to see a celebrity use her fame and fortune and pulpit to set examples of kindness and gratitude. Hopefully Taylor swift can send the message that you can thrive in the limelight and be a huge success without losing your soul in the process.

Originally Published: The Huffington Post

Unlikely ally in war against deniers: The Nazis

By: Eli Verschleiser

A trial that may well be the last case against a living Nazi for crimes against humanity will be full of haunting images. But none so much as the one that went viral last week of 81-year-old survivor Eva Kor seeming to embrace 93-year-old ex-SS officer Oskar Groening.

Oskar Groning as a young Auschwitz guard (left) and as an elderly man

Most of us cannot imagine being in the same room with a Nazi war criminal, let alone having a conversation with him. This incredible human being who lost her parents and sisters has decided to publicly forgive the Nazis as a way of empowering herself.

But it’s not just personal. In 1995 Kor, who lives in Terre Haute, Ind., convinced an infamous Nazi doctor, Hans Munch, to accompany her to Auschwitz, where he reportedly signed a letter affirming that the gas chambers there were used to exterminate Jews.

Groening, for his part, does not deny that he was in the SS and participated in Hitler’s final solution, not by directly murdering anyone, but as a pencil-pusher who channeled stolen money for the benefit of the Third Reich. That is, of course, not insignificant. It took a massive bureaucratic operation for the killing machine to run smoothly, and money was at the heart of it. That is, forcing the Jews to essentially finance their own genocide.

At any time, Groening could have refused to participate, albeit likely at the expense of his life, or simply tried to escape to the Allies, as we hope any moral person would do. But like so many others, most infamously the top facilitator Adolf Eichmann, Groening just followed orders. He says he requested a transfer from Auschwitz, but was denied.

New German laws intended to punish the last surviving Nazis now allow those who did not directly commit violence to be prosecuted along with those who pulled triggers, operated the gas chambers, or committed other acts of murder.

Groening has spoken out in great detail about what he remembers from those dark days more than 70 years ago, atrocities he witnessed that I will not recount here. He does not proclaim innocence or even ask for mercy.

“It is beyond question that I am morally complicit,” he said at the trial opening, attended by more than 60 plaintiffs, according to media reports. “This moral guilt I acknowledge here, before the victims, with regret and humility. I ask for forgiveness. You have to decide my legal culpability.”

Holocaust researchers say it is unprecedented to have an SS witness so willing to testify to his own crimes and those of the German people and the Nazis. No doubt, he is trying to avoid dying in prison. But whatever sentence is meted out by the German court, part of it should require that he spend the rest of his days testifying in painstaking detail for the historical record not only what he did and what he saw, but what went through his mind at the time.

It could be of great historical value to have some small insight into the enduring mystery of how so many people were caught up in the storm of relentless hatred and scapegoating that ignited the Holocaust in the 1930s and kept it burning until the Allies’ victory.

That testimony should be added to archives, along with the Nazis’ own meticulous documents, as many as 50 million pages, many of which are now publicly available. Convinced, of course, that the war would end differently, they were deeply proud of their evil work and wanted to preserve it for history, and individual ambitious Nazi officers most likely produced records -- of deportations, mass killings and confiscated property – they felt would benefit their miserable careers.

It never seemed to worry these arrogant psychopaths that the documents could one day be used against them in war crimes trials.

Of course, all the survivor and perpetrator testimony in the world, all the photos and film footage, even the remains of Auschwitz and other camps won’t convince Holocaust deniers here and in the Middle East. Their hatred of Jews and Israel create willful ignorance immune to objective research and logic.

The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has a long history of negating history, claiming that the Jews pulled one over on the world to manipulate their way into Palestine.

The leaders of Iran, as they threaten Israel with a nuclear version of the Holocaust, have been all over the map on the German genocide, with some saying it’s a myth, others calling for more study. Holocaust denial was a core belief of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who left office in 2013. His successor is more moderate on the topic. But in March of 2014, “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khameni was quoted as saying ““The Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and if it has happened, it’s uncertain how it has happened.”

Maybe instead of throwing Oskar Groening in jail, President Obama could bring him along on his next nuclear negotiation session to teach the Iranians a thing or two about how and what happened.

If he fails to do so, kind souls like Eva Kor may forgive. But the rest of us ought to demand much more accountability.

Originally Published: The Hill

The Mystery of Etan Patz Will Never End

By: Eli Verschleiser

Regardless of whether a jury convicts Pedro Hernandez in the May, 1979 killing of Etan Patz, the mystery of this case that has stirred the city for decades won’t go away.

Etan, eight at the time, disappeared while walking from his Lower Manhattan home to a bus stop two blocks away. He is believed to have stopped in a store for a soda along the way. He became the nation’s best known missing child case, launching legislative efforts and milk-carton awareness campaigns. Hernandez, then 18, worked at a nearby bodega.

With no body and no crime scene, all evidence is circumstantial, and Hernandez’s low IQ and long history of mental illness leave open the possibility that his confession and supposed recollections of the murder are at odds with reality. Even if the jury sees no reasonable doubt that he’s guilty, many of us will forever wonder if a dangerous child-killer may still walk the streets.

Another disturbing question posed by this case is how the police in a major metropolitan city, with some of the world’s best detectives could have found no clues, no leads that developed into a conviction for so long.

Another suspect, Jose Antonio Ramos, was investigated for the crime and even sued in civil court but was never prosecuted. There was no shortage of publicity of the disappearance. Did no one in this crowded metropolis see anything that could have helped the investigation? If Hernandez is the killer, why were his confessions over the years to family members, a prayer group and even the police ignored?

Could today’s better forensic science, ubiquitous security and cell phone cameras, better investigative techniques, or the “see something say something” campaign have led to a quicker arrest?

Etan’s parents, Stanley and Julie, may God have mercy on them, have suffered under the cloud of these and many other questions for nearly 36 years, while wondering what their now 44-year-old son would have been like. And despite being declared legally dead in 2001, is it possible that he remains alive, held against his will, perhaps brainwashed, or sent to another country? If so, would he even remember his former life?

Underpinning it all is the heaviest and most painful question: What if Etan had never been allowed to walk alone to the bus that morning?

Every day we as parents struggle with seemingly small, logistical decisions we know could have much bigger implications; Decisions about trusting kids, or trusting others with our kids. The Patz case, and others like it -- more recently the Leibby Kletzky disappearance and murder in Borough Park in 2011 -- loom over us as we make these decisions, forcing us to balance the real danger of abusers and kidnappers against the potential harm of being overprotective “helicopter parents” hovering too closely over their every move. Time doesn’t erase our memory or ease our angst.

“When people think about crimes such as Etan Patz or Adam Walsh or Jaycee Dugard, it’s as if they happened yesterday,” says Lenore Skenazy, author “Free Range Kids” and a critic of helicopter parenting.

“It is not making kids any safer to think that way. The big challenge when these things happen is to avoid what I call worst-first thinking.”

We’ve passed laws, named for famous victims, across the country to protect kids, and developed Amber Alerts and even smartphone apps to quickly respond when kids go missing. The ability to call or track cell phones also make us breathe a bit easier. The number of missing persons under age 18 reported to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center has shrunk from 558,493 in 2009 to 466,949 last year, though that figure was up from 2013’s 462,567.

Kidnappings are statistically rare per capita and those ending in murder rarer still, averaging about 100 per year, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Kidnapping by strangers amount to less than a quarter of all such cases, with nearly half committed by family members and the remainder by acquaintances, according to the FBI.

Skenazy argues that the only way to truly protect kids is through empowerment. “You can’t always prepare the path for your child,” she says. “Sometimes you have to prepare your child for the path.”

At Magenu, the organization I co-founded with my dear wife Dr. Shani Verschleiser, curriculum's prepared and facilitated by experts teach school kids to recognize dangerous situations, avoid them and report anything out of the ordinary, even if the perpetrator or attempted perpetrator is a family member, friend teacher or respected community member. Because education, awareness and a safe haven for those who come forward are more powerful tools than any app.

The painful questions of the Patz case will never go away, and future cases will force us to confront them again. The best we can do is combine our faith in God and the good people of the world – police officers and other protectors as well as bystanders on streets – with common sense skills that empower our kids to be as safe as they can be.

Originally Published: The Jerusalem Post

Gaining light, not darkness, from a tragedy

By: Eli Verschleiser

According to the 2012 New York Jewish Population study, 32 percent of the New York area’s 1.54 million Jews—or some 492,800 people—identify as Orthodox.

That means that in tens of thousands of homes, perhaps more than 100,000 in the New York area alone, observance of Shabbat and major holidays means candles-burning and likely some kind of cooking or heating device in use for a prolonged period of time.

In response to the horrifying deaths of seven children in a cooking-related Friday-night fire in Brooklyn, a former Fire Department of New York lieutenant tells the Wall Street Journal he saw “four or five” hot-plate-related fires leading to death (not necessarily in Jewish homes) in the course of a 42-year career.

“A deadly plague of Shabbat fires,” blares a headline in The Forward, which mentions four fires in 15 years, which killed 11 people, tied to such cooking devices.

The New York Times warns that the “Sabbath routine [of extended food warming is] a risky practice,” according to officials.

Make no mistake: There is absolutely no acceptable number of fire deaths, no percentage of collateral damage to justify any risky behavior. Every possible aggressive effort should be made to reduce accidental deaths of all kinds to zero.

The Sassoon family devastated by the Brooklyn fire came from Israel, where smoke alarms are not as widely encouraged or used. That may be why they didn’t think to install them in their home.

A campaign to maximize home safety is welcome and necessary.

But for some, the tragedy offers an opportunity to reinforce a narrative that Orthodox Jews are somewhat backward and reckless, placing too much faith in G‑d to protect them from themselves, obsessing too much over Torah study at the expense of real-world lessons.

This is a patently offensive takeaway.

Between 2007 and 2011, cooking equipment was the number-one cause of home fires in the U.S., amounting to 43 percent of blazes, according to the National Fire Prevention Association. Those figures will surely include people who left the oven unattended, left food on the stove, kept flammable material too close, or used defective equipment. Given this volume, and the small Jewish population, observant Jews cannot be considered any more prone to such accidents than others, and statistically are very likely responsible for far fewer per capita. Any truly observant Jew knows that preserving life and limb trumps any other day-to-day religious practice.

Would critics consider the practices of Sabbath-observant Jews acceptable only with a zero incident rate? That’s a standard not applied to any other group, including skiers, subway riders, airline passengers, or motorists, all of whom, sadly, encounter fatal mishaps regularly.

An electric hot plate is generally intended to be used for extended periods, and each one sold must be approved for safety. Other devices routinely approved and sold, but known to cause fires, include TVs, toasters, dryers, dehumidifiers, and, lately, electronic-cigarette chargers.

It is the responsibility of every person who uses these devices to use them responsibly, in accordance with user manuals, and to make sure they are maintained in safe operating condition. But mishaps are a sad part of life.

It compounds these tragedies when people heartlessly suggest, even before all the facts are out, that victims are somehow to blame for their fate. People with too much time on their hands reveal their true agenda when they try to stigmatize religious people who perish under these circumstances.

Would they blame Christmas for a blaze that started from faulty wiring on a tree? Or patriotism for a fireworks display or barbecue gone awry on July Fourth?

It’s natural for human beings to want to attach a greater meaning to a tragedy so that it seems less likely to happen to them. It’s also natural for journalists to seek out the “trend story” to take the coverage beyond the initial reportage.

But what if this incident instead allowed for a deeper understanding of what Shabbat actually brings to the world? Thousands fewer cars on the road, reducing pollution and accidents. Less crowding in stores and on public transportation. And stronger, more functional families.

For those who accept this blessing in their lives, it’s a time of refocusing. In a universe where we are always connected, reachable, and on the move, Shabbat offers relief from it all, a day to share and be with family. It’s a day that we have long, sit-down meals together, where we are at peace with all that is around us.

Even in the darkest of tragedies, some light can be found. Better education about fire safety to preserve life can be one source. So could an opportunity for better understanding, rather than a rush to quick and often ugly judgments.

Originally Published: The Huffington Post

Bibi On Capitol Hill - The Politics of Survival

By: Eli Verschleiser

It’s surprising that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, in trying to undermine the credibility of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would bring up the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“The prime minister was profoundly forward-leaning and outspoken about the importance of invading Iraq under George W. Bush,” Kerry said at a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing late last month. “We all know what happened with that decision.”



Wait. Wasn’t his proclamation in 2004 that “I actually did vote for the $87 billion [for war in Iraq and Afghanistan] before I voted against it," the flip-flop that heavily damaged his presidential bid that year? “Did he really want to bring that up?

But no-holds are barred in the current tussle between the U.S. and Israel over nuclear talks with Iran, as Netanyahu’s address to Congress was unwelcome by the White House.

Netanyahu has many reasons to be suspicious, not the least of which is apparent weakening of resolve by the U.S. on this matter. In June, 2013, United Nations envoy Samantha Power told a gathering of U.S. Jewish leaders that when it comes to thwarting Iran’s nuclear program “No deal is better than a bad deal. We will not accept a bad deal.”

Just days later the negotiating parties emerged from meetings in Geneva with the framework of an understanding, and a month later Iran agreed to roll back parts of its program, limiting its uranium production to below weapons grade (for now), in exchange for relief from sanctions. The latest version of the deal would kick the can down the road for 10 years, allowing the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism to ramp up its nuclear production over time.

At that point, of course, it will be too late to get tough. For Netanyahu and a large share of his electorate, it’s a zero sum game. No amount of nuclear power can be entrusted to a country led by fanatics who support global terror and regularly telegraph their hatred of Israel. Who would make sure Iran behaves? Why, international monitors, of course.

A group of former Israeli generals said Sunday they fear the dust-up over the address to Congress, tinted as it is with U.S. and Israeli politics, will signal so much disarray in the process that it will embolden the Iranians to take a hard line in the talks.

But the U.S. and Israel have faced bumps in the road before. Remember when Secretary of State James Baker in 1990, frustrated by lack of peace-talks progress, read the number of the White House and told then-prime minister Yitzhak Shamir to call when he is serious about peace?

The current mess seems worse because President Barack Obama on the face of it does not like Netanyahu, and the feeling is may be mutual, not so much because of personalities or politics but because Obama has consistently fallen into the trap of equating apartments built by Israelis with rockets launched by Hamas. That’s no way to show that you fully understand the existential threat felt by Israelis, which got Netanyahu elected. Obama likely worries that Netanyahu’s address will only bolster the right wing in Israel and make it more difficult to pursue any progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks before he leaves office in 2017.

It is a legitimate worry that the spectacle of Netanyahu speech to Congress at the invitation of Obama arch-rival John Boehner, the Republican House speaker, will eclipse the more appropriate and pressing issue of whether opposition to a deal that might one day allow Iran to hand over a nuke to Hezbollah should be blocked by Congress, in its role as a check against the power of the executive branch.

“Congress has every right to invite, even over the president’s strong objection, any world leader or international expert who can assist its members in formulating appropriate responses to the current deal being considered with Iran regarding its nuclear-weapons program,” former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz wrote in The Jerusalem Post.

But as a result of the White House face-off with both Netanyahu and the Republicans, the address will be seen as the kind of partisan fracas that leads to perennial gridlock on The Hill, rather than a key matter of international security.

This should not have become an international political spectacle; it should have been an important speech (to those who thought it was) by the one democratic country in the world that has been threatened to be annihilated by Iran its neighbor dozens of times. It is an embarrassment that U.S. and Israel politics – the president says he must keep arms’ distance from a foreign leader in the weeks before an election -- have not only crept into the process but dominated the issue.

Of course, Netanyahu is a savvy politician who will use the spotlight he gains here to score points in his bid to stay in power. But keep in mind that, perhaps more than any other country, Israel has the most to lose by picking the wrong leader.

That includes one who places too much faith in the protection of allies and international monitors, who have far less to lose.

In the end we can all at least agree on one thing, Bibi is a powerful and brilliant speaker.

Originally Published: The Times of Israel