Patrick Healy, deputy opinion editor: On Thursday, Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, all but called on Israelis to replace Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister. I don’t know how I feel about a top American lawmaker telling another country to change its leader. How do you see it?
Bret Stephens, opinion columnist: I also want to see Netanyahu go, at least once the Gaza war is over. Bibi — as the prime minister is universally known — is a failed leader who divided and debilitated Israel for nearly a year with a self-serving judicial reform bill before the disaster of Oct. 7. If he had any sense of personal accountability, as Israeli leaders like Golda Meir and Menachem Begin did after their own military fiascos, he’d resign.
The real question is whether Schumer’s speech will hurt Bibi politically or have something like the opposite effect. My guess is the latter. Notice what Naftali Bennett, Bibi’s predecessor as prime minister, wrote Thursday on social media: “Regardless of our political opinion, we strongly oppose external political intervention in Israel’s internal affairs. We are an independent nation, not a banana republic.” And Bennett hates Bibi.
Patrick: Schumer has been a staunch supporter of Israel (and still is). Is he caving to the progressive wing of his party? Is he just being honest about Netanyahu as an obstacle to peace? Is something else going on?
Bret: If you read Schumer’s entire speech, you’ll know it was no sop to progressives. He rejected calls for a permanent cease-fire before Hamas is defeated and called out a strain of antisemitism on the left that believes in the “right to statehood for every group but the Jews.” But he’s clearly trying to keep the Democrats in his caucus — as well as mainstream liberals across America — on Israel’s side by distinguishing between the right of Israel to defend itself and the way Netanyahu has chosen to exercise that right.
I could quarrel with Schumer on some of the particulars of his speech, but I don’t fault his sincerity. He thinks, not without reason, that Bibi is turning the Jewish state into a global pariah and he wants to stop that from happening.
Patrick: Would another Israeli leader pursue a very different path from Netanyahu?
Bret: When it comes to Gaza, the broad contours of Israel’s policy will be the same whether the prime minister is Netanyahu or any of his plausible rivals or successors — people like Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz, or the former Mossad head Yossi Cohen. Nor is there any chance that any of these leaders will agree to a Palestinian state anytime soon, at least not while there’s a possibility Hamas could come to power and Iran continues to arm groups like Hezbollah.
But tone and emphasis matter, and it would help Israel greatly to have a leader who doesn’t automatically cause such a neuralgic reaction in foreign capitals. Bibi has more than outworn his welcome. On that, Schumer and I agree, even if I wonder whether his speech was the wisest way to help ease him from power.
Source: nytimes.com
