Biden to NYT:  Netanyahu must stop legal reform legislation now

After meeting Israel’s Isaac Herzog on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden used the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman to pass a strong message to Prime Minister Netanyahu: Stop the legal legislation now; its continuation could cause irreparable harm to special US-Israel relations.

On Monday, Netanyahu told Biden in their first conversation since he was elected to office, that he would complete legislation to remove the reasonability standard empowering the high court to use that standard to strike down elected government decisions and appointments. The prime minister promised that after the summer recess, he would seek broad agreement on the rest of the judicial overhaul plan. Friedman reports that Biden responded with a clear message to Netanyahu: “Stop now or risk fractioning Israel democracy and its relations with the US, perhaps irreparably.”

Last week, the NYT columnist ran another White House message which threatened Israel with “reassessment” of relations for failure to follow the Biden line.