The leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate and the most powerful Jewish politician in Congress, Chuck Schumer, has raised his voice against Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-conservative war cabinet in Israel. In a surprising speech in the Upper House, he called this Thursday for new elections to be held in the Jewish state to prevent it from becoming a “pariah” due to the lack of international support for its military offensive in Gaza, which has already left more than 30,000 Palestinians dead and two million people displaced.
“Israelis know better than anyone that Israel cannot prosper as a pariah opposed to the rest of the world,” said Schumer, who defines himself as one of this state’s greatest allies on Capitol Hill. “I believe that holding new elections once the war begins to subside would give Israelis the opportunity to express their vision of the post-war future,” he said in a plenary session, without setting an indicative date for the new elections, in the one that has defended the two-state solution, the official US position.
He, as a Jew, feels “immensely obliged to speak and act,” he said at the beginning of his long speech, underlining his conviction that Israelis would elect “better leaders” than the current ones, who “do not meet the needs” of the country with its political vision “stuck in the past. Netanyahu and his administration are an “obstacle to peace,” he has stressed, in his harshest statements to date in a Congress closely aligned with Israel, but with a growing number of critical Democrats.
These words go beyond the recent change in rhetoric by President Joe Biden, who offered his unconditional support for Israel from the beginning of the conflict despite his public differences with Netanyahu, but has raised his tone in recent weeks demanding that it stop. his plans to invade Rafah (south of Gaza, on the border with Egypt), as well as asking him to allow the entry of humanitarian aid by land, which he has been blocking since the offensive began.
Support for Netanyahu in Israel was already on the line before October 7, with massive demonstrations across the country for his judicial reform, and has deteriorated since then due to his inability to prevent and stop Hamas’ brutal attacks in the south. of the country, which left 1,200 dead, and the taking of a hundred hostages, whose relatives still have no news five months later. However, polls do show majority support for Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.
Schumer has expressed concern about the war cabinet’s rejection of the two-state solution, which advocates the coexistence of a Palestinian state with Israel. “The bitter reality is that a single state controlled by Israel, which they advocate, would guarantee eternal war and further isolation of the Jewish community in the world, to the point that its future would be in danger.”
Peace in the region, he summarized, faces four obstacles: the existence of Hamas and its support in Gaza, the growing extreme right in the Israeli government and society, the government of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank led by Mahmoud Abbas – whom he has described as a “terrible” leader for the Palestinians – and the fourth obstacle is Netanyahu himself.
The Israeli leader “has formed a coalition with far-right extremists, such as Ministers (Bezalel) Smotrich and (Itamar) Ben-Gvir, and is all too willing to tolerate the number of civilian casualties in Gaza, which is driving international support to Israel to historic lows,” Schumer denounced. The two cabinet members he refers to, the most radical in the coalition, have in the past called for the permanent expulsion of Palestinians in Gaza, which constitutes a clear call to commit war crimes.
While Democrats raise their criticism, military support for Israel continues without much opposition in Congress. The U.S. annually allocates about $3.8 billion in military funding to Israel, assistance that enjoys wide bipartisan approval in both chambers. In fact, in the Lower House it has only been openly questioned by the progressive bloc of the Democrats, which includes Rashida Tlaib, the only congresswoman of Palestinian origin, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the main speaker of the leftist group.
In the Upper House, Eight senators, including former candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have called on Biden to end this aid if Israel continues to block humanitarian assistance in Gaza. They have demanded it in compliance with Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, which prohibits giving aid to countries that restrict humanitarian access.
Last week, Biden announced in the State of the Union address that the US military would build a temporary port on the coast of Gaza to provide assistance by sea, in addition to the food batches already sent by air. . However, construction could take several weeks, and the urgency is maximum: international organizations such as the WHO warn that dozens of children have already died from famine in the besieged region.
This Thursday, the White House National Security spokesman called for an investigation into a new Israeli airstrike against a UN food distribution center in Gaza. Netanyahu’s government claims he killed a Hamas commander, the target of the attack, but Palestinian health authorities say he killed four other people, including a UN worker.
Washington is increasing its pressure on Israel, which is fighting a war that could derail the November re-election of Biden, who has already faced protest votes over the bloodshed in Gaza in several Democratic primaries. Among others, in Michigan, the state with the largest population of Arab origin, where he reached 100,000 votes (13.2%). Precisely, this afternoon the president will give a speech in the metropolitan area of ??the capital, Minneapolis, and awaits his arrival with the usual endorsements for his support for Israel.
