Multiple officials condemned Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) call for new Israeli elections and his claim that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “lost his way.”
Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in the U.S. government, provided advanced notice to the White House ahead of his scathing Thursday morning speech on the Senate floor, according to White House national security communications adviser John Kirby.
“As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me: the Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct. 7,” the New York senator said. “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.”
“The United States cannot dictate the outcome of an election, nor should we try,” Schumer added. “That is for the Israeli public to decide — a public that I believe understands better than anybody that Israel cannot hope to succeed as a pariah opposed by the rest of the world.”
Netanyahu, Schumer alleged, “has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows.”
The death toll, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry, is more than 30,000 through five-plus months of war. That total does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. Hamas hides within and underneath civilian communities intentionally to put civilians in harm’s way.
Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Michael Herzog, called Schumer’s speech “unhelpful” and “counterproductive,” while David M. Friedman, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Israel from 2017-21, said he was “disgusted.”
“Israel is a sovereign democracy. It is unhelpful, all the more so as Israel is at war against the genocidal terror organization Hamas, to comment on the domestic political scene of a democratic ally. It is counterproductive to our common goals,” Herzog noted, whereas Friedman added, “The democratically elected leader of Israel is leading his nation in the defense of a barbaric foe, deploying a successful strategy that is broadly supported by the people of Israel, and the Senate Majority Leader publicly pushes for regime change in the middle of a war! He should be ashamed. It’s all about politics.”
Schumer’s GOP counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), called Schumer’s speech both “grotesque” and “unprecedented.”
Comparatively, Yair Lapid, the opposition leader to Netanyahu in the Israeli government, said Schumer’s speech was “proof” that Netanyahu is “losing Israel’s biggest supporters in the U.S.” and is “causing significant damage to the national effort to win the war and maintain Israel’s security.”
Kirby said the White House is aware that Schumer “feels strongly about this” but declined to say whether the president agreed with his declaration.
Netanyahu and Biden have increasingly clashed in recent weeks as Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas has continued unabated. Biden has said it would be a “red line” for him if Israel were to carry out full-scale military operations in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians are sheltering, without accounting for the civilians. Netanyahu, in response, reiterated that they would go into Rafah.
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Earlier this week, the U.S. intelligence community released its annual threat assessment, which found that “Netanyahu’s viability as leader as well as his governing coalition of far-right and ultraorthodox parties that pursued hardline policies on Palestinian and security issues may be in jeopardy.”
An unnamed senior Israeli official accused the U.S. of trying to “overthrow” the elected government of Israel.
