Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of opposing the Israeli public by calling for his government to be replaced through elections.
“It’s inappropriate to go to a sister democracy and try to replace the elected leadership there,” Netanyahu told CNN during an interview with Dana Bash on its weekly State of the Union Sunday morning program.
Israel "is not a banana republic” and its people chose its leaders, Netanyahu said.
He spoke three days after the Democratic politician issued a 45-minute speech on the Senate floor in which he called on Israel to hold new elections to replace Netanyahu, calling the Israeli leader an obstacle to peace.
Pundits have called his speech a wake-up call for the Israeli government, but Netanyahu told Bash the address was “a wake-up call to Senator Schumer.”
Netanyahu's government policies are supported by majority
“The majority of Israelis support the policies of my government,” which “is not a fringe government and represents the policies supported by the majority of the people.
“If Senator Schumer opposes these policies, he’s not opposing me, he's opposing the people of Israel,” he stated.
“The only government that we should be working on to bring down now is the terrorist tyranny in Gaza” run by Hamas, which forcibly rules that enclave and is holding Israelis hostage, including some with American citizenship, he stated.
Bash said polls showed that Israelis supported early elections, as she pressed him to commit to such a move once the war is over.
Netanyahu said that if elections were held while the war was being waged, “we would have six months of national paralysis and we would lose the war.”
Bash continued to push him, questioning him again, would he commit to early elections?
“It’s ridiculous to talk about it,” he retorted, saying one would not have called for US president George Bush to resign following the al-Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, and one would similarly not do so here, Netanyahu said.
What should be talked about is how to help Israel defeat Hamas, Netanyahu stated.
He spoke both with CNN and Fox News, as Schumer’s speech continued to dominate the news cycle on the morning talk shows in the United States on Sunday, with the White House as well as both Democratic and Republican politicians weighing in.
US President Joe Biden on Friday said Schumer’s comments echoed the concerns of many Americans, describing the remarks as a “good speech.”
Still, White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Sunday that Biden believed it was up to Israel to make its own decisions about internal politics.
“We respect the sovereignty of the Israeli people,” Kirby told Fox News Sunday. “The president believes it’s up to the Israeli people and the Israeli government to determine if and when there’s going to be new elections.”
Schumer, in a statement released by his office in response to Netanyahu’s CNN interview, said: “It’s a good thing that a serious discussion has now begun about how to ensure Israel’s future security and prosperity once Hamas has been defeated.”
Former US president Donald Trump, who is the presumptive Republican nominee, told Fox that the calls for Israel to replace Netanyahu showed that Biden had abandoned the Israeli leader.
“And all of a sudden, he dumped Israel. That’s what he’s doing. He dumped Israel,” said Trump.
But even he said the time had come for Israel to end the war.
“Do it [end the war] quickly and return to a world of peace.”
At the start of the weekly government meeting in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said that calls from the international community for his removal were part of a strategy to force an end to the war before Hamas was defeated.
“They are doing this because they know that elections now will halt the war and paralyze the country for at least six months,” Netanyahu said.
“Then let it be clear: If we stop the war now before all of its goals are achieved, this means that Israel will have lost the war, and this we will not allow. Therefore, we cannot, and will not, succumb to this pressure.”
Reuters and Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.