Jon Stewart: Benjamin Netanyahu's Visit Was a 'Festival of Slights'

Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress yesterday served a dual function: shoring up his close relationship with our Republican leadership and giving him a global platform to demonstrate his political power to Israeli voters two weeks before their national elections. It was, as Jon Stewart put it on last night’s Daily Show, “a festival of slights.”

Stewart took aim at Netanyahu for insisting that Iran is on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon, a claim he first made back in 1996. But our Republican-heavy Congress, which greeted the Israeli Prime Minister with nearly 10 minutes of applause, seemed perfectly willing to take his words at face value.

As Stewart put it, “Whether or not Netanyahu achieved his goals of sabotaging a deal with Iran or mistakenly opened up a rift in U.S.-Israeli relations, one thing is certain: the in-chamber response to this speech was by far the longest blowjob a Jewish man has ever received.”