Former Obama advisor: Bennett is a ‘healthy break’ from Netanyahu
Ben Rhodes told Israeli Channel 12 that even if he doesn’t agree with Naftali Bennett’s right-wing positions, he is “at least a straightforward” leader
An advisor to former U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview with an Israeli news anchor that the new Israeli prime minister was a “healthy break” from Benjamin Netanyahu.
In the Channel 12 podcast Unholy: Two Jews on the News, Ben Rhodes told the interviewer that even if he doesn’t agree with Naftali Bennett’s right-wing positions, he is “at least a straightforward” leader.
Rhodes continued, “Just having an Israeli prime minister or a foreign minister wanting to come to the U.S. and engage U.S. officials for a purpose other than humiliating them or picking a public fight to help their politics back home.”
“I can’t tell you how corrosive that was. Every interaction we had with Netanyahu through the last few years [of the Obama administration], he would use it… to pick a fight, just for the sake of picking a fight back home,” he added.
“If it is Bennett over time, I would much prefer a politician of the right who is at least straightforward and laying it out on the table so we can talk about it,” he added.
Netanyahu and Obama had an acrimonious relationship and disagreed on many issues, including how to deal with both the Palestinians and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
This was not the first time Rhodes has had less than glowing things to say about Netanyahu. In an MSNBC interview in June, he said that the former prime minister had “authoritarian tendencies.”
The All Israel News Staff is a team of journalists in Israel.
