Schumer triggers backlash in Israel for suggesting Netanyahu needs to go: 'Landed badly'

Columnist and writer Dan Senor explained that despite Israeli PM Netanyahu's bad year politically, Democrats' attempts to undermine him cause "offense" for Israelis.

DAN SENOR: I can't overstate how badly it landed in Israel and how badly it landed among the Jewish community in the United States and among the broader, sort of pro-Israel, pro-strong US-Israel relationship advocacy community in the United States. Israel is a thriving democracy. It is not a perfect country. The United States is not a perfect country. The United States, though, is like Israel, a thriving democracy. Israelis choose their leaders. U.S. senators from the well of the Senate do not choose Israel's leaders. It is not a secret that Prime Minister Netanyahu right now is. His polling has gone way down. 2023 was not a good year for him politically. Obviously, a combination of the fight over judicial reforms and then October 7th. So he's unpopular. But when you ask Israelis, should politicians from other countries be deciding who runs Israel? The reaction is 'hell no.' In fact, Prime Minister Netanyahu is now polling better since Schumer's speech, because people just take offense to this idea that the United States would treat Israel, or a U.S. senator would treat Israel like a banana republic. This article was written by Fox News staff.

In fact, even some of Netanyahu's fiercest political opponents, like Benny Gantz, who's serving in this emergency wartime cabinet with him but will compete against him, no doubt for the next prime minister as they've competed against each other in the past. They're pretty bitter political rivals. Again, they served together in this emergency war cabinet, but there's no love lost between them personally. Benny Gantz is one of the first people to come out with a statement saying we're a democracy. We choose who our leaders are, back off. ... I just can't emphasize enough, what the [Biden] administration and I guess Schumer, too, is trying to do to some extent is they're so frustrated with the reality that Israel intends to finish this war. A genocidal attack is waged on Israel on October 7th and the idea that Israel isn't going to do everything it can to wipe out that threat, and it's getting pretty close, by the way, it's almost done. 

And so the idea that at the 11th hour, when they're heading into the final phase of this war, the U.S. is starting to have reservations and pull back. And Israel isn't folding to those requests that Israel pull back. And so their response is, well, look, we can't do anything about Israeli policy, so we're just going to demonize the elected leader of Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and hope that that scores us some points internationally and domestically with their progressive base. That's what their calculation is, demonize Netanyahu, make this about Netanyahu, not about Israeli policy, because the reality is there's not much they can do about Israeli policy. So that's a bet they're making and I think it is backfiring.