On Tuesday, the Atlantic's national correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg reported that top officials in Obama's administration regard Netanyahu as lacking vision and having no grander aspirations than catering to the most hardline elements of his constituency.
An unnamed White House official was quoted calling Netanyahu a "chickenshit."
The full quote provided by Goldberg reads as follows: “The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars. The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s not [Ariel] Sharon, he’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no guts.”
Over the past two days the White House has been busy issuing one statement after another denouncing the remark or denying it completely. Even US Secretary of State John Kerry hit out Thursday at the reported insults, saying it was "disgraceful, unacceptable and damaging."
Despite the drop in support of Netanyahu, 27% of the Israeli public said he was fit to hold the office of prime minister. 11% chose the head of right wing party The Jewish Home, Naftali Bennet, as the next prime minister. Opposition leader and labor party head Isaac Herzog got 10% believing in his leadership capabilities. Only 6% said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is fit to lead the country.
Also on the issue on Israel-US relations, a Smith Research poll, taken exclusively for The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, found that 53% of Israelis consider the American administration more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel compared to a previous poll from March 2013, in which 27% considered Obama' administration more pro-Israel and only 16% said it was more pro-Palestinian.
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