Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech was hailed by his supporters in Israel as historic, powerful and moving, while being derided by some critics as absurd and cynical.
Much of the country is focused on the need to end the war in Gaza and bring home hostages held by Hamas.
Instead, the Israeli prime minister has offered a strong defense of Israel’s military campaign, calling it a proxy war against Iran that must be won at all costs.
“He put the truth on the world’s most important stage,” tweeted Aryeh Deri, head of the Shas party, part of Mr Netanyahu’s coalition government.
“His words represent every Israeli who wants to live in security and believes in the righteousness of the struggle for Israel’s existence,” responded Foreign Minister Israel Katz.
“Netanyahu gave a great speech,” wrote journalist Shai Peron, who describes himself as a Zionist, on the Ynet news website. “He did not give the world, academia, or the false awakening a pass. He made it clear to the world that this is a battle between light and darkness. He reminded everyone, ‘us first, you later.’”
The hostages in Gaza are the top priority of their families and friends.
A former hostage and several family members accompanied Mr Netanyahu and attended the meeting, but many protested against him in Washington.
Thousands of miles away in central Tel Aviv, family and friends of those arrested gathered to watch the speech in English, shown on a screen with Hebrew subtitles.
As the song played, relatives of some of those killed in Gaza took to the stage to criticize the prime minister with cries of pain – a stark contrast to the warm applause they saw in parliament.
“I’m constantly shocked by the level of absurdity, cynicism and hypocrisy,” said Noa Golan, who was in the crowd.
“It’s strange to be here, [it’s] It was so clear and obvious what needed to be done, and seeing him there. Lying would be a good way to describe it.”
Her friend, Ruth Bar-Shalom, said she really didn’t expect an announcement about a hostage rescue deal, but she hoped Congress would “be much wiser and ask him to respond.”
“He is exploiting everyone and everything, including the United States Congress, who are too ignorant to differentiate between lies and truth, between reality and the movie that he keeps showing them and they believe,” she said.
“It’s unbelievable, we’re standing here helpless. We’re witnessing it, and we can’t believe this can happen these days.”
Although Mr Netanyahu said Israel was actively involved in the hostage rescue efforts, he did not mention the ceasefire that was being negotiated. He also postponed the departure of the Israeli delegation to attend the next round of talks in Qatar.
Israeli officials said he wanted to coordinate his stance with US President Joe Biden first. But the move reinforced widespread belief that the prime minister was holding up a deal to appease far-right nationalists in his government.
Families of the hostages responded by demanding an emergency meeting with negotiators, accusing him of deliberately sabotaging their chances of bringing their loved ones home.
Netanyahu also barely mentioned the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in Israel’s sweeping military operations. And he angrily rejected the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) prosecutor’s accusation that he was starving Gaza. He said Israel had let half a million tons of food into the Gaza Strip, and blamed Hamas for stealing it.
Responding to the speech, Hamas said the prime minister had “repeated the degrading propaganda and lies he has been spreading for the past nine months”.
“It would be better to arrest Netanyahu as a war criminal and hand him over to the International Criminal Court than to give him the opportunity… to cover up mass murder and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip,” the statement said, accusing Washington of enabling Netanyahu to “evade punishment.”
Ahmad Majdalani, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) executive committee, condemned Netanyahu’s description of the conflict in Gaza as a civilized war, “as if the destruction of the Gaza Strip… were a civilized matter.”
In an interview with Voice of Palestine, he said the applause in parliament for “every word” Mr Netanyahu uttered showed the United States was a true partner in the fight.
“Netanyahu knows how to talk,” Amos Harel wrote in the left-wing newspaper Haaretz, “especially in English, his rhetorical skills far more impressive than those of all his domestic opponents.”
He said the prime minister was right about Hamas’ atrocities and “unimaginable support for massacres” at some US universities.
“But these words are worth little if the prime minister does not take responsibility for Israel’s defeat on October 7, does not rush to bring the hostages home and has refused for months to come up with a detailed, realistic plan for the ‘after’ war in Gaza.”
