Dems ‘Schu’ Bibi
Prez cheers Chuck’s call for Israel election
President Biden hailed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday for calling on Israel to have a “new election” as soon as possible, with Biden telling reporters the Brooklyn Democrat made a “good speech” — despite Jewish groups and Israeli leaders slamming Schumer’s comments.
“Sen. Schumer contacted my staff, my senior staffer, that he was going to make that speech,” Biden said during an Oval Office meeting with Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s taoiseach, or head of state.
“I’m not going to elaborate on the speech,” added the president, 81. “He made a good speech, and I think he expressed serious concern shared . . . by many Americans.”
Schumer, 73, argued on the Senate floor that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “radical” members of his cabinet were an “obstacle” to peace and called for a new election once the war “starts to wind down.”
“It’s become clear to me that the Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct. 7,” said Schumer, whose remarks follow growing backlash among Democrats to Biden’s refusal to call for a cease-fire in the war.
During recent Democratic primaries in the battleground states of Michigan and Minnesota, where thousands voted “uncommitted” in protest of Biden’s stance.
Despite widespread support for Israel, a Wall Street Journal poll released last week found Americans are divided over its conduct in the fight against Hamas — with 42% of registered voters saying Israel has “gone too far,” while 43% said the response had “been about right” or “not gone far enough.”
‘Political intervention’
Schumer said in his speech that if Netanyahu won’t step down and “continues to pursue dangerous and inflammatory policies that test existing US standards for assistance,” America will have to “play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage.”
Israeli opposition leader Benny
Gantz called Schumer’s speech a “mistake,” posting on X: “Israel is a strong democracy, and only its citizens will determine its leadership and future.”
Another Netanyahu rival, exPrime Minister Naftali Bennett, weighed in on X: “Regardless of our political opinion, we strongly oppose external political intervention . . . . We are an independent nation, not a banana republic.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also rebuked Schumer’s “unprecedented” remarks, while House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Schumer was “just plain wrong.”
THE uncommitted voters of Michigan say “jump,” and Chuck Schumer asks “how high?” The Senate majority leader gave an extraordinary speech flaying the democratically elected leader of an ally currently engaged in fighting a defensive war against a hideous terrorist enemy.
The speech calling for Israeli Prime Minster Bibi Netanyahu to go, along with increasingly critical statements by the White House, shows that the Democrats have decided that appeasing their leftwing base in an election year is now their top consideration.
This is bad all around. As a matter of basic decency, this isn’t something that allies do to one another other, especially not in wartime.
Present unvarnished views in private? Absolutely. Try to nudge a partner toward a favored policy?
Sure. But blast a friendly government in hopes that it can be toppled via a new election, just months after suffering a monstrous terrorist attack and as it is still trying to destroy a terrorist group deeply embedded in an urban environment? No.
The fact of the matter is that this is not Bibi Netanyahu’s war. It is the nation of Israel’s war. Netanyahu sustained political damage after the Oct. 7 attack, but his goal of prosecuting the war against Hamas to its completion is widely shared in Israel. Immediately after the attack, Israel formed a government of national unity that has pursued the war policy that Democrats now find so objectionable.
If Netanyahu were to resign tomorrow, any number of things might change in the Israeli government, but the war against Hamas would stay the same.
It is easy, sitting in Washington, worrying about how to placate the anti-Israel uncommitted voters in the Democratic primary, to forget the shock of the massive pogrom by Hamas on that infamous day in October. Israelis, though, aren’t going to forget, nor should they.
It’s a key tell about Schumer’s intentions that his speech engendered a universally negative reaction in Israel, and Schumer — who is no naif — must have anticipated as much. Benny Gantz, who would presumably be running against Netanyahu in a future election, harshly rejected the Schumer call for a new government. So, the only place where Schumer could have any assurance of advancing his cause was here at home.
What stronger signal could there be that the leadership of the party has heard the calls to rein in Israel than to have the previously staunch supporter of the Jewish state, Chuck Schumer, unload on its wartime government?
Hamas has been getting devastated on the battlefield, but the turn against Israel among Democratic officials here is a sign of the success of its longer, deeply cynical strategy.
By doing everything in its power to create the predicate for more civilian casualties in Gaza, Hamas hopes to turn international opinion against Israel, and so it has done so in one of the two major American political parties.
If you had told many of the same Democrats criticizing Israel today that within five months of the Oct. 7 attack they’d be inveighing against Israel’s war against Hamas, they’d have been incredulous. If you had told them they’d be getting pushed around by pro-Hamas sentiment in their own party, they’d have rejected the idea as impossible. If you had told them they would have been seeking a two-state solution as one of their highest post-Oct. 7 priorities, they might have considered it a smear. Yet here we are.
On top of everything, this isn’t good domestic politics. There is still majority support for Israel.
The anti-Israel turn demonstrates, yet again, that the Biden campaign is pursuing a base strategy in November. Just the last couple of days, Kamala Harris visited an abortion clinic, Joe Biden suggested there will be no executive action at the border and Schumer — having run it by the White House first — delivered his philippic.
What’s fidelity to an ally compared to zeal in pursuit of an election strategy?