Posted on 03/14/24
| News Source: The Hill
Republicans say Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made a serious political misstep with his call for new elections in Israel to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
They wasted no time going after Schumer’s address, with a number of visibly-frustrated GOP senators arguing the 45-minute speech was a major miscalculation.
“So now he’s meddling in the Knesset elections in Israel?” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told The Hill about Schumer’s call. “I think the voters in that country should decide that. There’s a war cabinet that has people that are political arch rivals. I don’t hear them calling for an election, so how the hell can somebody in the United States call for elections?”
“It’s a misstep because we’re meddling and he’s trying to have it both ways,” Tillis continued, arguing politics was at core of Schumer’s address. “There is no good foreign policy or other reasons to make that kind of statement.”
Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in U.S. history, had largely stayed silent on the topic of Israel in recent weeks as Senate Democrats and progressives increasingly became infuriated with the escalating situation in Gaza.
That changed on Thursday as he issued his most blistering criticism yet of Netanyahu, saying that he “lost his way” after a number of political and legal battles. He also argued that the prime minister is in a coalition with “far-right extremists” and has been “too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows.”
“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,” Schumer added, referring to Hamas’s attack. “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.”
His remarks lit a fuse with a number of top Senate Republicans.