ON MARCH 14, 2024, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.), a man who 13 months prior had vowed at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center that “as long as Hashem breathes air into my lungs, the United States Senate will stand behind Israel with our fullest support,” peered solemnly over his glasses into the Senate’s C-SPAN cameras and informed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it was time for him to go.
“The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7,” Schumer declared, referring to the shock Hamas massacre and mass kidnapping event just across the militarized border separating the Palestinian Gaza Strip from the Israeli envelope around it. “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 towards a two-state solution….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.”
And if Netanyahu, in such an election, were to win enough votes to form another government, then continue prosecuting the war against Israel’s attackers in ways Schumer doesn’t approve?
“Then,” the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in U.S. history warned, “the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course.”
It’s an increasingly common refrain among American critics of Israeli policy, including many who are otherwise wary of Washington thumbing the scales on world affairs: The $3.8 billion that the U.S. gives each year should directly influence Israeli behavior—on war, on humanitarian assistance to Gaza, on settlements in the West Bank, even on proposed reforms to the judiciary branch—or be withdrawn.
“The Netanyahu government, or hopefully a new Israeli government, must understand that not one penny will be coming to Israel from the U.S. unless there is a fundamental change in their military and political positions,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) said last November, reiterating a critique he and several other candidates made when seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
President Joe Biden, a stalwart supporter of Israel throughout his half-century in public office, seemed this spring to be moving closer to Sanders’ point of view. Three days before reported, based on “four U.S. officials with knowledge of internal administration thinking,” that Biden “will consider conditioning military aid to Israel if the country moves forward with a large-scale invasion of Rafah.”
