‘Say the Right Thing for the Cameras’: The Schumer-Biden-Netanyahu Clash

Schumer said on Thursday that the prime minister had “lost his way”, adding that his coalition no longer fit the needs of the country following the initial attack on October 7. The US senator also said that Israel had been “too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows."

On Friday, US President Joe Biden openly praised US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s recent address in which he called for new elections in Israel. Biden said the speech was “good”, adding that it raised concerns “shared not only by him but by many Americans.”

Schumer’s recent address marks a growing concern among the Democratic party about their weakening voter support. During the Democratic presidential primary in the swing state of Michigan, 14.5% of voters voted “uncommitted” as a protest to Biden’s support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

On Monday, Sputnik’s Fault Lines spoke with Esteban Carrillo, a Beirut-based Ecuadorian journalist and editor for The Cradle, who agreed that the Democrats’ change in tone is most likely a result of poor polling.

“I'm pretty sure that this is related to the most recent opinion polls,” said Carrillo. “All of a sudden Joe Biden, the White House, is trotting out its highest, most senior Jewish official to essentially call for new elections in Israel.”

Carrillo then suggests that the White House is essentially saying to not “pay attention to what we have been doing for the past six months, pay attention to what we're saying now”.

“Now, we are concerned. Now, we want to see less civilians dead,” Carrillo said. “Joe Biden said it himself in an interview, a few days ago. He said something like Rafah would be a red line and then immediately walked it back, he said there are no red lines for Israel. No matter what, we are going to continue sending weapons.”

“So, this is what Schumer and, I guess, in extension the Democrats are trying to do, is to do what we're seeing across Western media over the past several weeks, which is to paint Netanyahu as somehow external to Israel. Netanyahu is not Israel, Israel is not Netanyahu, despite the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu won, easily won, elections over a year ago,” he added.

“And to this day, 87% of Israeli Jews, which is essentially three quarters of all Israelis, when asked, think that the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza is justified, the number of deaths are justified, and they wouldn't want to see less force being used on the ground. So, this is an attempt to whitewash complicity in genocide. It's really nothing else,” said Carrillo.

In January, it was reported by a global news agency that polls in Israel showed consistently high support for the state’s military offensive in Gaza even 100 days after the conflict first began.

Sputnik’s Jamarl Thomas pointed out that Biden is politically boxed in by the conflict between Palestine and Israel: his voters and even those in his own party are becoming increasingly critical of Israel’s offensive actions which have left thousands of women and children dead, hungry, and/or seeking shelter. But Biden is also wary of the “$100 million that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) will use against him” this election season should he pull his support for Israel.

“Joe Biden first of all, is a self-proclaimed, very proud Zionist,” said Carrillo. “He has said this multiple times. So you have that, first of all, then second of all is the amount of influence that AIPAC and the Israeli lobby weighs on US politics is really something that I think generations from now, I think we're going to be studying in terms of what a democracy actually looks like.”

“I mean, look at how quickly the US responded to other nations with sanctions or with military action, and they don't do anything when it comes to this. The US president is afraid to lift a finger,” he added.

“At least 30,000-plus have been killed. So many children, so many women, so many innocents. But, as far as an actual break we'll have to see because what I have seen is that apparently the US is now trying to send more precision-guided bombs, as opposed to the 'dumb bombs' that created so much death and destruction in Gaza,” said Carrillo.

“They're also doing this pier because, yes, apparently, the US president, the most powerful man in the world, cannot pick up a phone and tell the leader of this allied nation to stop killing civilians, to stop dropping bombs on hospitals and on schools and on shelters, or to allow humanitarian aid in.”

Over the weekend, the European Union pledged €7.4 Billion aid package to Egypt to address economic challenges and potential migration pressures. The pledge, Thomas suggests, could be an anticipation of Israel’s invasion of Rafah, and followed news of Egypt building barriers in the Sinai.

“I'm so glad that you brought up the situation with Egypt because, yes, first of all, they have already built a buffer zone on the Gaza border security zone where Egyptian authorities give different answers as to what this is meant for,” said Carrillo. “They say this is an expansion of other work. [But] nobody gives a straight answer.”

“The EU is the last one to have just all of a sudden become so deeply concerned about the Egyptian economy, which has been on the rocks for years now. They've been trying to get a loan extension with the IMF, and it came together, it came together a couple of weeks ago, and an IMF official came out and said the same thing as Ursula von der Leyen, which is we need to make sure Egypt can handle, you know, any upcoming difficulties, especially in relation to the refugee crisis,” he added.

“Then, you also had the Gulf states, you had the UAE investing $35 billion in buying up land in Egypt, you had the Saudis wanting to buy up land in Egypt, you had British Petroleum talking about a 1.5 billion gas project. All of these things just one week after the next, coming together. Just as Egypt is building this security zone and you have Egyptian officials coming out and saying 'this will be an act of war, we will never accept this,' and so on and so forth,” Carrillo continued.

“Today the Egyptian foreign minister, if I'm not mistaken, came out and said that the US needs to remind Israel of the consequences of launching the Rafah invasion. This is exactly the same strategy as we're seeing by the Democrats, as we're seeing by Chuck Schumer, by Joe Biden. [They] go out on the cameras and [they] say the right things and then turn [their] back and do the exact opposite,” said Carrillo.

“So, the situation in Rafah is catastrophic as it is across Gaza. As we've said before, there is no safe place for Palestinians anywhere in Gaza.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back against Schumer’s calls for new elections in the country, adding that an effort to bring about elections now, at the “height of the war” is an effort to halt the war and subsequently paralyze Israel for at least six months.