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President Joe Biden on Friday praised Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s call for Israeli elections and his sharp criticism of that nation’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Schumer, the highest ranking Jewish elected official in U.S. history, delivered a ringing rebuke to Netanyahu from the Senate floor on Thursday, declaring that the prime minister’s management of the war in Gaza showed he had “lost his way.”
Biden, when responding to a reporter’s question, declared that Schumer “made a good speech, and I think he expressed serious concern shared not only by him, but by many Americans.”
Early in the war, Biden pursued a hug-in-public-push-in-private strategy with Israel, hoping that would allow the U.S. to maintain sway with Netanyahu and his far-right government. But Israel continuously rejected the White House’s advice by pursuing an all-out military campaign to root Hamas out of Gaza, one that has led to widespread shortages of food, water, medicine and other supplies in an enclave of 2.2 million people.
In recent weeks, the Biden administration has been increasingly critical of Israel’s approach to the war against Hamas following the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. In February, Biden told reporters that Israel’s response in Gaza was “over the top.” And last weekend, he told MSNBC that Israel needed to moderate its military campaign, saying “You cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead.”
But Schumer went further, saying “the Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct. 7.”
The president, appearing with Ireland’s prime minister in the Oval Office on Friday, said he would “not elaborate” further on the speech but acknowledged that Schumer had given the White House a heads-up before delivering it.
Biden has not commented publicly about future Israeli elections but he and his senior aides have grown deeply frustrated at Netanyahu for not doing more to minimize civilian casualties.
His support of Schumer’s statement comes days after administration aides said they would consider conditioning military aid to Israel if the country moves forward with a large-scale invasion of Rafah.
The president’s openness to taking this step reflects the extreme strains in his relationship with Netanyahu, who has rejected subtler efforts by the Biden administration to rein in his conduct of the war with Hamas following the Oct. 7 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,” Schumer said Thursday, before adding: “Nobody expects Prime Minister Netanyahu to do the things that must be done to break the cycle of violence, preserve Israel’s credibility on the world stage, and work toward a two-state solution.”
Schumer’s speech carried extra weight considering his long track record of strongly pro-Israel positions. And his address wouldn’t have been possible without the Biden administration’s own shifts in recent weeks, prompted by mounting political pressure from Democrats and pro-Palestinian voices in and outside of Washington.
The Senate majority leader’s remarks were met with sharp criticism from some Republicans in Washington and pro-Netanyahu voices in Israel.
