A threat to the pro-Israel consensus - opinion

• Published date: 21 March 2024
• Author: DOUGLAS BLOOMFIELD
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Foreign aid bills that used to have trouble getting votes have more recently been on auto pilot. Aid for Israel was called the locomotive that pulled the rest of the legislation to final passage. Israel has been a must-see destination for candidates, incumbents, governors, trade missions and political interest groups

But the ongoing reign of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and in particular the way he is waging war against Hamas in Gaza, is rapidly raising the voltage.

Netanyahu is called to be replaced

The highest elected Jewish official in American history just called on the Israeli people to replace their prime minister and the most extreme government in their nation's history.

This government is "stuck in the past" and the country needs new leadership with a "vision for the post-war future."

Netanyahu "has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel," said Sen. Chuck Schumer.

Under this extremist government Israel risks becoming an international "pariah" and becoming isolated, the Senate majority leader warned.

Netanyahu went on American television to complain that Schumer's speech was "totally inappropriate." He accused Schumer of criticizing Israel, but CNN interviewer Dana Bash pointed out that the senator was clearly criticizing him, not Israel.

Schumer, who used to call himself "Bibi's best friend in Washington," said the prime minister has become "an obstacle to peace."

Netanyahu's complaint about election interference might have had some credence had it not come from a notorious meddler in American partisan politics with a decades-long record of overt electoral interference.

Netanyahu has made no secret of the fact that he prefers dealing with Republicans and their Evangelical Christian base over the Democrats and American Jews. One is more inclined to go along with his extremist policies while the other raises too many uncomfortable issues.

TO BE SURE, both countries have a history of meddling in other country's politics, though Bibi has taken that to a new level, even to the point of sending a former Republican operative to be his ambassador in Washington.

His support for Mitt Romney against Barack Obama in 2012 did considerable damage to his relations with the Obama administration. But the greatest outrage was when he blindsided the president to address the Congress and become the GOP's lead lobbyist against Obama's Iran nuclear deal.

Schumer expressed what many Democrats were...