“This isn’t an honor given to Netanyahu by the US Congress, this is the US Congress obeying the commands of the man who leads the nation that owns the US Congress,” commented Scott Ritter, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, in an interview for Al Mayadeen on Netanyahu’s speech at Congress.

Ritter emphasized that “This isn’t so much the US Congress inviting the Israeli Prime Minister to speak, but the Israeli prime minister calling in the duties and responsibilities of the Congress that Israel has bought and paid for over the years.” He explained that every US presidential candidate “that was backed by the pro-Israeli lobby, AIPAC, won because of the money that was put on the table.”

Consequently, Scott Ritter argued, “This is the result, where a war criminal, a man who has been accused of genocide, who has arrest warrants being prepared for him by the International Court of Justice, a man who heads a state that has been defined legally as an apartheid state, carrying out an illegal and unjust occupation, and again, genocide of the Palestinian people, has demanded an audience to the Congress that he has bought and paid for.”