By Rich Lowry
Friday,
March 15, 2024
The uncommitted
voters of Michigan say, “Jump,” and Chuck Schumer asks, “How high?”
The
Senate majority leader gave an extraordinary speech flaying the
democratically elected leader of an ally engaged in fighting a defensive war
against a hideous terrorist enemy.
The
speech calling on Israeli prime minster Bibi Netanyahu to go, along with
increasingly critical statements by the White House, shows that the Democrats
have decided that appeasing their left-wing base in an election year is now
their top consideration.
This
is bad all around. As a matter of basic decency, this is not something that
allies do to one another, especially not in wartime. Present unvarnished views
in private? Absolutely. Try to nudge a partner toward a favored policy? Sure.
But blast a friendly government in hopes that it can be toppled via a new
election, just months after suffering a monstrous attack and as it is still
trying to destroy a terrorist group deeply embedded in an urban environment?
No.
The
fact of the matter is that this is not Bibi Netanyahu’s war. It is the nation
of Israel’s war. Netanyahu sustained political damage after the October 7
attack, but his goal of prosecuting the war against Hamas to its completion is
widely shared in Israel. Immediately after the attack, Israel formed a
government of national unity that has pursued the war policy that Democrats now
find so objectionable. If Netanyahu were to resign tomorrow, any number of
things might change, but the war against Hamas would stay the same.
It
is easy, sitting in Washington, D.C., and worrying about how to placate the
anti-Israel uncommitted voters in the Democratic primary, to forget the shock
of the massive program carried out by Hamas on that infamous day in October.
Israelis, though, aren’t going to forget, nor should they.
It’s
a key tell about Schumer’s intentions that his speech engendered a universally
negative reaction in Israel, and Schumer — who is no naïf — must have
anticipated as much. Benny Gantz, who would presumably run against Netanyahu in
a future election, harshly rejected the Schumer call for a new government. So,
the only place where Schumer could have any assurance of advancing his cause
was here at home.
What
stronger signal could there be that the Democratic leadership has heard the
activist calls to rein in Israel than the previously staunch supporter of the
Jewish state, Chuck Schumer, unloading on its wartime government?
Hamas
has been getting devastated on the battlefield, but the turn against Israel
among Democratic officials in the U.S. is a sign of the success of its longer,
deeply cynical strategy. By doing everything in its power to create the
predicate for more civilian casualties in Gaza, Hamas hopes to turn
international opinion against Israel. So it has done in one of the two major
American political parties.
If
you had told many of the same Democrats criticizing Israel today that within
five months of the October 7 attack they would be inveighing against Israel’s
war against Hamas, they would have been incredulous. If you had told them they
would be getting pushed around by pro-Hamas sentiment in their own party, they
would have rejected the idea as impossible. If you had told them they would
have been seeking a two-state solution as one of their highest post–October 7
priorities, they might have considered it a smear.
Yet
here we are.
On
top of everything else, this isn’t good domestic politics. There is still
majority support for Israel. The anti-Israel turn demonstrates, yet again, that
the Biden campaign is pursuing a base strategy in November. Just in the last
couple of days, Kamala Harris visited an abortion clinic, Joe Biden suggested
there will be no executive action at the border, and Schumer — having run it by
the White House first — delivered his philippic.
What’s
fidelity to an ally compared to zeal in pursuit of an embattled president’s
election strategy?
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