Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has slammed Chuck Schumer’s remarks about his leadership as “totally inappropriate” after the Senate Majority Leader called for him to step down.
During a speech on the Senate floor this week, Schumer suggested that Israel should have fresh elections in order to find a new leader.
“The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7,” Schumer declared. “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.”
Watch Senator Chuck Schumer’s speech on Thursday in which the majority leader — and the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the U.S. — urged for new leadership in Israel, calling Prime Minister Netanyahu a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East. https://t.co/DNQ6ULnlxt pic.twitter.com/J82wMalCOL
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 15, 2024
He continued:
Five months into this conflict, it is clear that Israelis need to take stock of the situation and ask: Must we change course?
At this critical juncture, I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel, at a time when so many Israelis have lost their confidence in the vision and direction of their government.
In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday, Netanyahu made clear that Schumer should mind his own business and that Israel would do what is necessary to destroy Hamas.
“I think what he said was totally inappropriate,” Netanyahu argued. “It is inappropriate to go to a sister democracy and try to replace the elected leadership there.”
“That is something the Israeli public does on its own and we’re not a banana republic,” he continued. “I think the government we should be working to bring right down is the Hamas tyranny that murdered thousands of Israelis… that’s what we should be focused on.”
The back and forth comes as Netanyahu prepares to proceed with an invasion of Rafah despite warnings from the Biden administration that doing so would cross a “red line.”
“We’ll go there. We’re not going to leave,” Netnayahu said last week. “You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is, that October 7 doesn’t happen again. Never happens again.”
