Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu (left) with presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. Photo: www.bluegrasspundit.com.

Politico – When Bibi Netanyahu was quoted in Time magazine appearing to tamp down his relationship with Mitt Romney in May, there were two plausible explanations — he was watering down the portrait of friendship that the GOP candidate had described because it was overstated, or he was being diplomatic after a news account of their decades-old ties that, sources with ties to Obamaland said at the time, didn’t thrill the White House.

It seems likely, amid word of Romney’s pending Israel trip, that the latter was the case. As Chemi Shalev points out in Ha’aretz, Netanyahu has made clear where he stands by being the vehicle by which the trip was rolled out, a high-risk, high-reward roll of the dice — and it’s hard for the White House to complain, for a very specific reason:

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