Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set on Wednesday to become the first international leader to address a joint session of Congress and, with that speech, Israel will become the country with the highest number of dignitaries to take to that podium.
Netanyahu has appeared before joint congressional sessions three other times. He spoke in 1996 during the period of the Oslo Accords and again in 2011 when former US President Barack Obama was pushing for a two-state agreement to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The prime minister spoke again in 2015 when he came to urge Congress not to support Obama’s Iran deal.
His record of three speeches has until now matched that of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who spoke before Congress in 1941, 1943, and 1952.
This speech is Netanyahu’s fourth and comes amid Israel’s darkest hour as the IDF is actively fighting Iranian proxies on three fronts: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah at its border with Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen.
The unique accolade granted him by Congress occurs at a time when Netanyahu is among the more contentious of the international leaders heading a US ally country in light of the Gaza war and his judicial reform plan.
Joint congressional sessions are rare in any circumstance and only a handful are held in any given year. The first foreigner to speak to Congress was Hungarian revolutionary leader Lajos Kossuth in 1852. However, the practice itself began with French Ambassador Andre Lefebvre de La Boulaye in 1934 and slowly expanded.
Netanyahu’s speech will mark 10th address by Israeli leaders to Congress
British leaders in total, including Churchill and Queen Elizabeth have spoken to Congress only eight times. French dignitaries have spoken nine times to Congress, with the last such speech delivered by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2018. Leaders of Mexico, which borders the US, have spoken to Congress eight times. Canadian leaders have appeared only three times.
Israeli leaders, starting with former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1976, have already spoken nine times to Congress and Netanyahu’s speech will mark the tenth such event.
Rabin appeared a second time, together with King Hussein of Jordan in 1994, the year the peace treaty between the two countries was signed.
Former prime minister Menachem Begin appeared before Congress in 1978 along with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to mark the signing of the peace agreement between those two countries.
Former Israeli president Haim Herzog spoke to Congress in 1987 and his son, Issac Herzog, who is the country’s current president, did so last year to mark 75 years of ties between America and Israel.
Former Israeli president Shimon Peres spoke to Congress in 1995, when he was serving as the country’s prime minister, and former prime minister Ehud Olmert did so in 2006.