The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Monday praised Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s scathing denunciation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, calling it a “very courageous speech” from a lawmaker long known as a supporter of Israel.
Sen. Jack Reed, Rhode Island Democrat, told members of the Defense Writers Group that his New York colleague’s speech from the Senate floor on Thursday identified Mr. Netanyahu as one of several obstacles to peace in the region and called for new elections in Israel.
A furious Mr. Netanyahu slammed Mr. Schumer’s address as “totally inappropriate” and many U.S. supporters of Israel have attacked the speech as well, at a time when Israeli forces are battling Hamas militants in a brutal war in Gaza. But Mr. Reed said the address was badly needed.
“Few times in my experience in the Senate has someone stood up and really, based on principle, called out the individuals that needed to be identified,” Mr. Reed said. “It wasn’t just Netanyahu, obviously Hamas is a brutal, diabolical regime that has to be destroyed.”
Mr. Schumer accused the longtime Israeli leader of placing his own political survival over that of the country and its people, while damaging the Jewish state’s reputation in the U.S. and around the world.
“He has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows,” he said. “Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.”
Mr. Reed said Mr. Netanyahu is in a very compromised position as a prime minister in wartime, having failed to prevent the horrific Hamas rampage on Oct. 7 that set off the latest round of fighting.
“There are indications that he tolerated Hamas as a way to disrupt the Palestinian Authority,” he said. “Certainly, there wasn’t the kind of intelligence attention that should have been placed on it. Their build-up and their ability to conduct that operation were horrendous. It was designed to be a barbaric attack.”
In his address last week, Mr. Schumer’s call for new elections in Israel particularly rankled the Israeli leader, whose standing in the polls has plummeted since the war began.
“It’s inappropriate for him to go to a sister democracy and try to replace the elected leadership there,” Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday on CNN. “That’s something that Israel, the Israeli public does on its own. We’re not a banana republic.”
Supplying Ukraine
On another key topic, Mr. Reed pushed the Republican-led House to approve a $60 billion aid package for Kyiv. The measure has stalled as Ukraine is running perilously low on ammunition, particularly artillery shells, in its campaign against Russian invaders, he said.
“This has become, really, a ground-based, almost World War I battle because the effective air defenses prevent a lot of close air support. What is critical is our artillery and ground-to-ground missile systems,” he said. “They have to be resupplied by us immediately. We have to pass the supplemental legislation to give them the weapons, the artillery, the ammunition to do the job.”
Kyiv’s supporters were disappointed that Ukraine’s much-anticipated June 2023 counteroffensive against Russia didn’t bear much fruit on the battlefield. Now the Russians seem to have captured the momentum.
“We were hoping [Ukraine] could accumulate momentum with an offensive attack and get them closer to Crimea [and] closer to the border of the Donbas,” Mr. Reed said, saying the Ukrainian attack had been too dispersed and the Russian army had gotten better at defensive maneuvers.
“The Russians shifted to the type of warfare they’re more adept at — fixed positions, bunkers, and heavily mined positions,” the senator said.
The Russians have stabilized the front line and are putting pressure on the Ukrainians. In February, they managed to push Kyiv’s troops out of Avdiivka, a town in occupied Ukraine north of Donetsk, Mr. Reed said.
“It was a situation where our lack of support became evident. They were low on ammunition, artillery shells particularly,” he said.
If Kyiv’s supporters — including the U.S. — manage to get the ammunition flowing again, Ukraine will likely spend the rest of the year probing and slowly pushing back on the Russian front lines.
“Next year, 2025, has to be again another offensive operation, which hopefully gets them to the point where they really fully cover Crimea with fires,” Mr. Reed said. “That would make the position of the Russians very difficult and hopefully force them to the table.”
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
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