The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Monday praised Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer‘s scathing denunciation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, calling it a “very courageous speech” from a lawmaker long known as a supporter of Israel.
Sen. Jack Reed, Rhode Island Democrat, told members of the Defense Writers Group that his New York colleague’s speech from the Senate floor on Thursday identified Mr. Netanyahu as one of several obstacles to peace in the region and called for new elections in Israel.
A furious Mr. Netanyahu slammed Mr. Schumer‘s address as “totally inappropriate” and many U.S. supporters of Israel have attacked the speech as well, at a time when Israeli forces are battling Hamas militants in a brutal war in Gaza. But Mr. Reed said the address was badly needed.
“Few times in my experience in the Senate has someone stood up and really, based on principle, called out the individuals that needed to be identified,” Mr. Reed said. “It wasn’t just Netanyahu, obviously Hamas is a brutal, diabolical regime that has to be destroyed.”
Mr. Schumer accused the longtime Israeli leader of placing his own political survival over that of the country and its people, while damaging the Jewish state’s reputation in the U.S. and around the world.
“He has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows,” he said. “Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.”
Mr. Reed said Mr. Netanyahu is in a very compromised position as a prime minister in wartime, having failed to prevent the horrific Hamas rampage on Oct. 7 that set off the latest round of fighting.
“There are indications that he tolerated Hamas as a way to disrupt the Palestinian Authority,” he said. “Certainly, there wasn’t the kind of intelligence attention that should have been placed on it. Their build-up and their ability to conduct that operation were horrendous. It was designed to be a barbaric attack.”
In his address last week, Mr. Schumer‘s call for new elections in Israel particularly rankled the Israeli leader, whose standing in the polls has plummeted since the war began.
“It’s inappropriate for him to go to a sister democracy and try to replace the elected leadership there,” Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday on CNN. “That’s something that Israel, the Israeli public does on its own. We’re not a banana republic.”
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.