Netanyahu’s Likud party says Israel ‘not a banana republic’ after Chuck Schumer calls for new elections – live | Israel-Gaza war

In addition to his calls for new Israeli elections, Chuck Schumer is also calling for Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to step down.

According to Schumer, Abbas must step down for a “new generation of Palestinian leaders who’ll work towards attaining peace with a Jewish state”.

“The PA under new leadership must reform to viably serve as the basis for a Palestinian state with the trust of the people,” he added.

Schumer has already sparked backlash among Republican leaders and the Israeli government over his calls from earlier today for new elections in Israel.

In a series of tweets on Thursday, Chuck Schumer is maintaining his calls for new Israeli elections, saying Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence”.

Schumer went on to accuse Netanyahu of pushing support for Israel “to new lows” and said that Israel “can’t survive if it becomes a pariah”.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party has responded to Chuck Schumer’s calls for new elections, saying that Israel is “not a banana republic”.

It went on to say, “Contrary to Schumer’s words, the Israeli public supports a total victory over Hamas, rejects any international dictates to establish a Palestinian terrorist state, and opposes the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza.”

“Senator Schumer is expected to respect Israel’s elected government and not undermine it. This is always true, and even more so in wartime,” it added.

Jim Jordan, the chair of the House judiciary committee, has threatened the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, with contempt of Congress if she does not comply with his committee’s investigation into her office.

The House judiciary committee last month issued a subpoena to Willis “for documents related to the Committee’s oversight of the Fulton county district attorney office’s alleged misuse of federal grant funds”.

In a letter to Willis, Jordan wrote:

While you have indicated that additional documents may be forthcoming in response to the Committee’s subpoena, the Committee has yet to receive any additional responsive materials in the three weeks since your initial response. Accordingly, the Committee expects that you will produce all responsive documents to the subpoena in the categories prioritized by the Committee no later than 12:00 p.m. on March 28, 2024. If you fail to do so, the Committee will consider taking further action, such as the invocation of contempt of Congress proceedings.

The protest vote against Joe Biden’s stance on Gaza continued in Washington and Georgia this week, where thousands of voters chose no one, sending a message to the president that their votes depend on a ceasefire.

Washington, a reliably blue state, saw support from local elected officials and major unions in its multi-faith push for “uncommitted” delegates. They spent about $20,000 and began organizing on 24 February. More than 56,000 voters selected uncommitted delegates on the ballots counted so far, though more than 200,000 ballots remain uncounted there as of Thursday morning.

Georgia’s ballot didn’t have an uncommitted option, so organizers there put together a “leave it blank” campaign, calling on voters to cast a ballot, but not fill it out, to send a message to Biden on Gaza. Nearly 6,500 voters there left it blank. And nearly 9,000 voters chose Marianne Williamson, which some protest voters have selected because she supports a ceasefire. Combined, the votes exceed Biden’s margin of victory in the state in 2020, which was about 12,000 votes.

The uncommitted movement started in Michigan’s presidential primary, where more than 100,000 Democratic voters chose the protest vote in a state with a large proportion of Muslim and Arab Americans. Next, Super Tuesday saw several states push for uncommitted, with Minnesota seeing the highest percentage of such voters, at 19%. Then came Hawaii, where 29% of voters in a low-turnout primary voted for uncommitted. All three states got enough votes to earn delegates to the Democratic national convention in August.

Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, described Chuck Schumer’s call for new leadership in Israel as “highly inappropriate” and “plain wrong”.

Johnson, at a last-minute press conference alongside House GOP leaders, said:

This is not only highly inappropriate, it’s just plain wrong for an American leader to play such a divisive role in Israeli politics while our closest ally in the region is in an existential battle for its very survival.

Speaking to reporters during House Republicans’ annual retreat at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, Johnson added:

We need to be standing with Israel, and we need to give our friends and allies our full support we have to stand with and support them right now. But what you’re seeing from the White House and clearly from the Senate Democrats is really exactly the opposite.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has hit back at Chuck Schumer’s speech on the Senate floor calling for new elections in Israel, describing the Senate majority leader’s comments as “grotesque and hypocritical”.

In a statement following Schumer’s speech, McConnell accused the Democratic party of having “an anti-Israel problem”, adding:

It is grotesque and hypocritical for Americans who hyperventilate about foreign interference in our own democracy to call for the removal of the democratically elected leader of Israel.

He added:

Israel is not a colony of America whose leaders serve at the pleasure of the party in power in Washington. Only Israel’s citizens should have a say in who runs their government. This is the very definition of democracy and sovereignty. Either we respect their decisions, or we disrespect their democracy.

Michael Herzog, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, has criticized statements by the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, calling for new elections in Israel.

Schumer, the first Jewish majority leader in the Senate and the highest-ranking Jewish official in the US, strongly criticized Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in a lengthy speech this morning on the Senate floor.

Netanyahu had put himself in a coalition of far-right extremists and “as a result, he has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows”.

Posting to X, Herzog wrote:

Israel is a sovereign democracy. It is unhelpful, all the more so as Israel is at war against the genocidal terror organization Hamas, to comment on the domestic political scene of a democratic ally. It is counterproductive to our common goals.

Congressman Marc Molinaro of New York said he was co-sponsoring a bill to protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF), becoming the first Republican to do so.

In a statement on Wednesday, Molinaro said he would be cosponsoring the Access to Family Building Act with Democratic congresswoman Susan Wild of Pennsylvania as “a parent who has personal experience with IVF”.

Molinaro said he was “troubled” by the ruling by Alabama’s supreme court that found frozen embryos are children, adding that he supports “all women and families who choose IVF to bring life in to the world”.

“Protecting it is just common sense,” he added.

Molinaro, a vulnerable Republican seeking re-election, becomes the first GOP member to back legislation to protect the right to IVF.

Another Republican, congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, was previously reported to have supported the bill but later said she was “added to the bill without confirmation” and that there “are amendments that would need to take place” for her to support it.

Martin Pengelly

Katie Britt, the Alabama senator who delivered a much-mocked State of the Union response last week, rued the “irony” of being told by the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, that “it’ll be fine” before giving her disastrous speech.

Speaking to the hard-right Texas senator Ted Cruz, on his Verdict with Ted Cruz podcast, Britt said Johnson told her:

‘People are going to tell you horror stories about all of these things that happen and people’s career being blown up over it.’ And he’s like, ‘It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.’

It was not fine. Her speech focused on Republican talking points prominently including immigration and crime. But Britt’s bizarrely dramatic delivery, in particular in a lurid section on sex trafficking and immigration subsequently picked apart by factcheckers and the subject of the story herself, prompted widespread mockery.

Martin Belam

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer used a speech on the Senate floor to call for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza and say that Israel has lost its way in its war on Gaza, adding that Benjamin Netanyahu should call an election.

Schumer said it was a “grave mistake” for Israel to reject a two-state solution to the Middle East crisis, Reuters reported.

His intervention comes five months after Israel launched its military assault on Gaza after the 7 October surprise attack inside southern Israel that killed about 1,140 people and during which about 240 people were abducted and seized as hostages by Hamas.

The Hamas-led ministry of health in the territory says the Israeli military operation has claimed over 31,340 Palestinian lives, many of them women and children. Much of the population of Gaza is displaced, and UN agencies have warned there is a severe risk of famine as the distribution of humanitarian aid has been restricted.