Darth Schumer issues Order 66 on Netanyahu
Last week I had a heated conversation with a friend of mine who was incredulous of my contempt toward Nikki Haley's failed 2024 campaign. He was also shocked by my pronouncement that ending US foreign aid to Israel was the right think to do, not just for the United states, but for Israel. I happen to be one of those often demonized "dual citizens" owing not to the fact that I'm Jewish, but rather both of my parents having been immigrants from Israel before I was born. When I was 19 I did my obligatory military service, and while I don't think I'm owed anything for it, I have the right just as anyone else to express my dissent to Israeli government policies.
I told my friend that the foreign aid weighs around Israel's neck like a millstone, and that nothing worth $3.8 billion/year along with $14 billion in additional emergency funding comes without strings attached. I have been warning others for a while that the consensus opinion among Capitol Hill lawmakers of supporting that aid was sundowning in the same manner as a certain Oval Office occupant. This was true much earlier than Oct. 7, more so among Democrats than Republicans. In March 2023 Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut called for conditioning US aid to Israel on certain internal issues occurring there such as the building of settlements, judicial reforms, and Israel's abiding by the policy of pursuing the two-state solution. Murphy is no firebrand radical, he is pretty much straight out of DNC central casting and votes with President Biden 98.5% of the time. Murphy was elected in 2012 to the Senate seat once occupied by Joe Lieberman, the first Jewish American to be nominated to a major party presidential ticket and a lifelong Israel supporter who would have never supported such conditioning of aid. Clearly something has shifted over the years, and it shouldn’t matter where one stands on being for or against the aid.
Yesterday Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) signaled that this change isn’t isolated to just a fringe portion of one party. In a well-covered speech on the Senate floor he went so far as to demand new elections in Israel as “the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel”. He effectively declared that the US Congress, so long as he is in a leadership position, has no confidence in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Pres. Biden reacted to the speech approvingly. For the pro-foreign aid crowd this should be the nuclear reactor meltdown moment as over the years they have assured Israelis and their American supporters that Israel’s survival relies on the continuing flow of American dollars to Israel and from there back to US defense contractors. But now the two highest ranking Democratic politicians are signaling that this is no longer a given. I blame Netanyahu himself in large part for this situation. He has been in power for most of the last 15 years, and yet he has only done more to entangle Israel’s fortunes in the dependence on the aid rather than figure out how to do without it. The problem with him, like with so many leaders fighting more for their political fortunes than for the interests of their people, is that he was defending the status quo rather than improving it. For many years he deceived the voters by saying that only he, and he alone, could deal with the threats of Iran and Palestinian terror groups. At this point he has solved neither.
Schumer’s speech is also a signal to the American public and the world that the senior senator for New York, the state with the largest Jewish population, who himself is Jewish was calling for regime change in the world’s only Jewish state. He even invoked the corny line that he often has said in the past that his last name is derived from shomer, the Hebrew word for a guardian, and that he fashions himself as the Shomer Israel, or Guardian of Israel. (My own independent research shows that schumer is simply one of several German surnames that means “shoemaker”).
So what is the plan now for those that are committed to the status quo in the US-Israel relationship? Are they hoping for Biden to get amnesia about his feelings toward Netanyahu, or Schumer to be replaced? Are they rooting for a GOP victory in November? None of those are a solid assurance of a stable maintenance of their beloved policy. Those that for years built on the security that there is bipartisan consensus in Congress supporting the expenditures are now sweating bullets. They shouldn’t complain that they were never warned.