CHUCK SCHUMER, the Democratic Senate majority leader, described as the highest ranking Jewish official in the United States and top ally of president Joe Biden, caused uproar on Thursday when he condemned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and called for elections to replace him and the right-wing extremist government he leads.
Schumer’s dramatic intervention during a speech to the Senate was a break with his previous position as one of Netanyahu’s most outspoken supporters in the US. This is the man who travelled to Israel days after Hamas launched its Al-Aqsa Storm operation on October 7th to pledge his and the US’s total support to the Zionist regime in crushing the Palestinian resistance at any cost to the lives of Palestinians in Gaza.
Now Schumer has turned on Netanyahu, telling Congress: ‘He has been too willing to tolerate the civilian death toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows.’
He added: ‘Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.’
In fact the Zionist state of Israel is already a ‘pariah’ in the eyes of tens of millions of workers and youth throughout the US, UK and Europe along with the masses of the world.
It is this unavoidable truth that has shaken Schumer and the ruling US capitalist class and led to him turning on his erstwhile close friend Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition government.
Schumer said: ‘The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7th’, and that: ‘The world has changed – radically – since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.’
It’s not just Netanyahu’s governing vision that is stuck in the past but the belief, shared by the Zionist state and its imperialist backers, of Israel as all powerful, able to dominate militarily the Middle East for its imperialist master, while subjecting Palestinians to the brutality of an apartheid system that treated them like ‘human animals’, as one Israeli minister called them.
This belief in the all-powerful Israel, backed up, financed and armed by US imperialism, was dealt a shattering blow on October 7 and the failure of the Israeli military to crush Palestinian resistance despite its genocidal offensive in Gaza has caused a massive crisis reflected in the Senate and governments in the UK and Europe.
It follows the bleak assessment by the CIA in its annual Threat Assessment Report published last Monday that the genocidal war in Gaza represents the biggest threat to US imperialism and that Israel has no chance of defeating the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.
The best the CIA could offer was that Israel ‘will face lingering armed resistance from Hamas for years to come’ but would never achieve victory.
The crisis gripping the American ruling class was demonstrated by the fact that the condemnation of the Israeli regime came in a speech by Schumer pushing the Senate to pass a military assistance package for Israel!
It was a clear attempt by the Biden administration to yet again try to divert the mass uprising of workers against the US complicity and support for genocide.
There has been a mass movement against Biden in his primary election campaign with Democratic voters registering over 100,000 ‘uncommitted’ votes in the Michigan primaries boosted by the support of the two major unions’ local chapters.
Other states are recording similar turnouts for the ‘uncommitted’ campaign against the US support for Israel and demanding an immediate ceasefire.
With the working class across the world rising up in support of the Palestinian struggle and the once mighty imperialist powers exposed as having feet of clay and facing defeat at the hands of the Palestinian resistance, now is the time for action.
The powerful working class in the US, UK and Europe must force their union leaders to call general strikes to bring down the major imperialist regimes and bring in workers’ governments and socialism.
Now is the time to build revolutionary parties of the International Committee of the Fourth International to provide the leadership required to put an end to imperialist wars and genocidal slaughter, by going forward to the victory of the world socialist revolution.
