Netanyahu Won’t Attend Trump Inauguration

Image by Israeli government press office
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not attend the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, quashing earlier reports that he had been invited to attend.
Netanyahu was not invited to the inauguration in Washington, D.C., and leaders of foreign countries do not usually attend U.S. presidential inaugurations, the Israeli daily newspaper Israel Hayom reported, citing the Prime Minister’s Office.
Earlier this week, Netanyahu canceled his trip scheduled for Jan. 18 to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, leading to further speculation that he might be planning to attend the inauguration.
The Prime Minister’s Office also said in a statement that the cancellation of Netanyahu’s participation in Davos, where he was scheduled to speak and had meetings planned, had nothing to do with a police investigation into possible bribery and fraud charges.
A day after Trump’s election victory in a phone call with Netanyahu, the president-elect invited the prime minister to meet with him in the United States “at the first opportunity.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO