New York Senator Chuck Schumer Wants Regime Change For Israel
Jose Nino
|
On March 14, 2024 Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer pushed for Israel to hold new elections. He cautioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the far-right members of his coalition government. are testing US standards for military assistance.
“The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7. 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,” declared Schumer. As a report by Israeli news agency Haaretz noted, Schumer is “the highest ranking elected Jewish official in U.S. history.”“I believe that holding a new election once the war starts to wind down would give Israelis an opportunity to express their vision for the post-war future,” Schumer added.
He called attention to how Netanyahu has allegedly “lost his way, putting himself in coalition with far-right extremists like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. He continued by noting that he is aiming to implement “dangerous and inflammatory policies that test existing U.S. standards for assistance.”
Schumer urged the Biden regime to “play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage,” if Netanyahu stays in power.
The New York senator made his anti-Netanyahu call against the backdrop of increasing pressure within the Democratic Party to condition US military aid to Israel, with 8 senators urging Biden to stop sales if Israel fails to improve the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
“Extremist Palestinians and extremist Israelis seek the same goal: from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, they aim to push the other from the land,” Schumer continued.
He also noted that Netanyahu “all too frequently bowed to the demands of extremists,” lumping him and right-wing Israeli settler extremists with Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as four roadblocks toward reaching a lasting peace.
Schumer also pushed for the removal of Abbas as president, stating “for there to be any hope of peace in the future, Abbas must step down and be replaced by a new generation of Palestinian leaders who will work towards attaining peace with a Jewish state.”
“Nobody expects Prime Minister Netanyahu to do the things that must be done to break the cycle of violence, to preserve his credibility on the world stage, to work to a two-state solution,” he warned. “Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah,” highlighted Schumer.
Schumer’s remarks showcase growing divisions within the Democrat Party on the Israel question. It’s good to see people grow more skeptical of the merits of the US doling out military aid to Israel unconditionally.
However, calling for regime change in Israel is excessive and will generate even greater problems as potentially more hard-line elements take power in the scenario that Netanyahu is pushed out of office.
Such extremist actors could actually put Israel on the war path, thereby dragging the US into a preventable conflict in the Middle East.
The best course of action here is for the US to cut aid to Israel and have it fully assume the consequences of the Palestine conflict and other disputes with its neighbors. Non-interventionism must be the order of the day here.
Share: