On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer’s demand for elections in Israel and his harsh criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s prime minister, were commended by President Joe Biden.
The highest senior Jewish political figure in American history, Chuck Schumer, warned Netanyahu sharply on Thursday from the Senate floor, saying that exactly how the prime minister handled the Gaza conflict demonstrated that he was “out of his way.”
Schumer “made an excellent speech, and I believe he conveyed an important issue expressed not just by him, but many other Americans,” Biden said in response to a reporter’s question.
Early on in the conflict, Biden tried to keep U.S. influence over Netanyahu and his far-right administration in Israel by pursuing a hug-in-public-push-in-private approach. However, Israel consistently disregarded the counsel of the White House and launched a full-scale military operation to drive Hamas out of Gaza, which has resulted in a serious lack of medicine, food, water, as well as other supplies in the 2.2 million-person territory.
John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, responded to reporters later when they asked whether Biden wanted fresh elections in Israel and for Netanyahu to lose his position of authority: “That will be up to the Israeli citizens to decide.” He restated Biden’s assertion that many Americans found resonance in Schumer’s comments.
Following the strikes in Israel on October 7, the Biden administration grew more critical of Israel’s strategy in the war against Hamas over the past weeks. Biden said to the media in February that Israel’s reaction in Gaza was “above the top.” Additionally, he stated to MSNBC this past weekend that Israel must scale back its military campaign, stating, “You can’t get 30,000 more Palestinians killed.”
However, Schumer continued, stating that “after October 7, the Netanyahu coalition no more fits with the requirements of Israel.”
When the president and the prime minister of Ireland met in the Oval Office on Friday, the president stated he might “not expand” on the subject of the speech, but he did admit that Schumer had alerted the White House ahead of time.