Former Israeli prime minister and now leader of the opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Sunday used a Facebook live session to mock a possible nap by US President Joe Biden during a meeting.
When asked whether he was aware of the meeting of the current Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett with Biden in Washington in August, Netanyahu responded affirmatively and nodded, in an apparent attempt to depict the American leader momentarily falling asleep at the meeting.
“I’ve heard,” he said. “I heard Biden was very attentive to what Bennett had to say… He dropped his head in agreement.”
As the politician's humorous parody spread in social media Netanyahu's Likud Party rushed to issue a statement ensuring that “Former Prime Minister Netanyahu knows and cherishes president Biden as a friend of Israel for 40 years.”
“His criticism," the Likud statement claims, "was directed only at Naftali Bennett who spoke at length about nothing during his visit to the White House.”
Video of the meeting, described by many news outlets as “misleading,” depicted the two leaders in armchairs, with Biden in a face mask. The US president stayed almost motionless for some time while his counterpart described “another chapter in the beautiful story of the friendship between our two nations”.