“If he [Biden] were supportive of Israel, the Iran nuclear deal would have never been signed and Israel would have never been attacked,” Trump said.
Akiva Van Koningsveld
(JNS)
There’s “100% no question” that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and the Biden administration are telling Israel how to run its government, former U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday.
“The Democrats are very bad for Israel. Israel sticks with them. I guess Israel’s loyal maybe to a fault because they stick with these guys,” the presumptive Republican nominee told Fox News’s Howard Kurtz.
In a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday that Schumer described as a “major address” on a possible two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, the Democrat labeled some of Netanyahu’s senior Cabinet members as “bigots” and “extremists” and called for an early election.
Schumer claimed that he was speaking on behalf of “mainstream Jewish Americans” to represent their views on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He suggested that Washington consider conditioning or cutting off military aid to Jerusalem unless a new government is formed.
According to Trump, if the Democrats had been good to the Jewish state, Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist massacre of 1,200 people, primarily Jewish civilians, in the northwestern Negev would never have happened.
“If he [Biden] were supportive of Israel, the Iran nuclear deal would have never been signed and Israel would have never been attacked,” Trump told Fox News, adding: “I’ll bet you I would have had Iran in the Abraham Accords.”
Asked about Schumer’s charge that the “Israeli war campaign” has killed many innocent Palestinians, Trump stated: “Well, they [Israel] lost a lot of people on Oct. 7, too. People have to remember that.”
“He doesn’t forget it—he looks at where do I get more votes. And I guess he’s seeing the Palestinians, and he’s seeing the marches, and they are big. And he says: ‘I want to go that way instead of Israel.’ I don’t know how Israel stays with these people,” Trump said of Schumer.
“He just said essentially that Bibi Netanyahu should take a walk, right?” added the presidential candidate.
‘SO BAD FOR ISRAEL’: Donald Trump blasts Biden and Democrats over their lack of support for Israel amid calls to oust prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. https://t.co/NBtjoY0jZh pic.twitter.com/XC335uQsP1
— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 17, 2024
The Israeli Prime Minister on Sunday slammed Schumer’s demand for early elections in the Jewish state as “totally inappropriate,” telling CNN that the legislator is opposing the will of the Israeli people.
“The majority of Israelis support the policies of my government. If Senator Schumer opposes these policies, he’s not opposing me—he’s opposing the people of Israel,” Netanyahu told CNN’s “State of the Union” program.
“It’s like after 9/11, you’re in the midst of fighting the war against Al-Qaeda, and an Israeli would say: ‘You know, what we need now is either new elections in the U.S., or if your system doesn’t allow it, then President Bush should resign and we should have an alternative leader. … You don’t do that to a sister democracy, an ally,” the premier charged.
Netanyahu reiterated that Israelis should decide when an election should be held while praising both Biden and Trump for their support.
According to a survey published on March 10, even Israelis who do not trust Netanyahu’s leadership continue to back some of his key war policies, including his opposition to the two-state solution and his insistence that the Israel Defense Forces defeat Hamas in Rafah.
Almost three in four Jewish Israelis believe that U.S. support for Israel has dwindled following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, the poll found.
Some 44% of Israelis want Trump to win November’s election, compared to 30% who would prefer Biden to secure a second term, according to a separate survey published last week by Channel 12.
Earlier this year, in his victory speech after winning the Iowa caucuses by a landslide with 20 delegates, Trump vowed to solve the conflict with Hamas quickly should he be voted back into office.
Image: U.S. President Donald Trump prays at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, May 22, 2017. Photo by Mendy Hechtman/Flash90.
