Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer threw around words like “international pariah” and “right-wing” in speaking about Israel’s government on the Senate floor on Thursday. He called for Israelis to hold an election and get rid of Prime Minister Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I believe that holding a new election once the war starts to wind down would give Israelis an opportunity to express their vision for the postwar future,” Schumer said.
“As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me, the Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7. The world has changed, radically, since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past,” Schumer said.
“Five months into this conflict, it is clear that Israelis need to take stock of the situation and ask: Must we change course? At this critical juncture, I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel, at a time when so many Israelis have lost their confidence in the vision and direction of their government,” he said.
Schumer is the highest-ranking Jewish elected leader in Congress.
For his part, Netanyahu said he expects Schumer to respect Israel’s elected government and not try to undermine it.
“Israel is not a banana republic, but an independent and proud democracy that elected Prime Minister Netanyahu,” the prime minister said. “Contrary to Schumer’s words, the Israeli public supports a total victory over Hamas” and “opposes the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza.”
The Gaza war started Oct. 7, with a terrorist attack on Israel by the ruling government of Palestinian Gaza, an area that is not an actual state but is cordoned off from other countries and governed by terrorist Hamas. Israeli hostages were taken, raped, tortured, and killed. Israel responded with military force, but it is fighting not only Hamas, but terror-exporter Iran, which is supplying Hamas with weapons.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, Senate Republican minority leader, issued a scathing response to Schumer: “Israel is not a colony of America whose leaders serve at the pleasure of the party in power in Washington. Only Israel’s citizens should have a say in who runs their government. It is grotesque and hypocritical for Americans who hyperventilate about foreign interference in our own democracy to call for the removal of a democratically elected leader of Israel. This is unprecedented. We should not treat fellow democracies this way at all.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, said that Schumer’s remarks were inappropriate and “just plain wrong for an American leader to play such a divisive role in Israeli politics while our closest ally in the region is in an existential battle for its very survival. We need to be standing with Israel.”
Schumer’s remarks appear to be in coordination with President Joe Biden, who has taken a harsher stance against Israel, telling MSNBC last weekend that Netanyahu needs to “pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost” in the war.
Netanyahu responded that Biden is now hurting the interests of Israel and the “wish of the majority of Israelis.”
