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Schumer to Join Invite for Netanyahu Address to US Congress After Calling for Israeli Leader’s Ouster
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) holds a press conference in the US Capitol in Washington, DC, April 23, 2024. Photo: Annabelle Gordon / CNP/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is set to join House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) in inviting Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to address a joint session of the US Congress less than two months after Schumer called for the Israeli premier’s ouster from office.
“He intends to join the invitation; the timing is being worked out,” a Schumer spokesperson told The Hill.
Johnson reportedly sent Schumer a draft invitation last month but had not received a response.
Schumer’s decision to greenlight Netanyahu’s address came after the lawmaker called for new elections in Israel to replace the prime minister during a March 14 speech on the Senate floor.
Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish US elected official, accused Netanyahu of aligning himself with “extremists” and condemned his approach to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
“It has become clear to me the Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct. 7,” Schumer said, noting the date when Hamas terrorists invaded the Jewish state from Gaza and started the conflict.
In response, Netanyahu called Schumer’s remarks “totally inappropriate.”
“It’s inappropriate to go to a sister democracy and try to replace the elected leadership there. That’s something the Israeli public does on its own,” Netanyahu said on CNN.
Schumer’s decision to support the invitation to Netanyahu sparked a wave of backlash from progressive politicians and activists.
Former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner condemned the invitation in a post on X/Twitter, writing, “Netanyahu should not be welcomed to Congress. How shameful.”
Matt Stoller, a progressive political pundit and writer, called Schumer’s decision “incoherent.”
“You can’t give a major address on Netanyahu and then immediately backtrack,” Stoller said on X.
Cenk Uygur, founder of the left-wing media outlet The Young Turks, similarly denounced Schumer’s decision.
“After pretending to be tough on him, Schumer is now inviting Netanyahu to speak to Congress,” the commentator posted on social media. “After he’s slaughtered 25,000 women and children, our politicians give him $17 billion, pass laws making it illegal to criticize his government, and invite him to lecture us. Disgusting.”
In the months following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel — in which the Palestinian terror group killed 1,200 people and kidnapped 253 others as hostages — Democratic politicians have grown increasingly critical of the Israeli military response in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave ruled by Hamas.
In February, a group of Democratic lawmakers from 12 states sent a letter to US President Joe Biden calling for a “ceasefire” in Gaza. The following month, several Senate Democrats penned a letter demanding that Biden stop US military assistance to Israel.
A growing number of prominent Democrats have also made recent statements calling to condition Washington’s military aid to Israel and even suggesting the Jewish state is committing genocide.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said in April that there was “ample evidence” that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. Weeks later, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called on Netanyahu to “resign.” She also signed onto a recent letter from several House Democrats urging the Biden administration to halt further arms transfers to the Jewish state.
Polling suggests that the Democratic Party’s voter base has started to sour on Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Sixty-three percent of Democrats believe that Israel has “gone too far” in its military campaign following the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, according to an AP-NORC poll from January. Meanwhile, 49 percent of Democrats believe that Israel is committing a “genocide” in Gaza, according to an Economist/YouGov poll.
Amid the mounting pressure from his own party, Biden has threatened to pull back US support for Israel, citing the humanitarian situation in Gaza, where Hamas terrorists embed themselves within the civilian population and use civilian sites — such as hospitals — to house their command and operation centers.
Corey Walker is a journalist based in Washington, DC.
The post Schumer to Join Invite for Netanyahu Address to US Congress After Calling for Israeli Leader’s Ouster first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
The post Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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