WASHINGTON (JTA) — Days after calling for new elections in Israel and saying that the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is an “obstacle to peace” and has “lost his way,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said he would welcome Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress.
Schumer’s statement, sent to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency via a spokesman, came after Rep. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, said he was ready to invite Netanyahu to speak to Congress. To do that, he had to get approval from Schumer, the Jewish Democratic majority leader from New York.
Schumer saw Johnson on CNBC on Thursday and almost immediately relayed his answer: He would welcome the speech. Notably, his statement did not name Netanyahu and made a point of saying he would extend the invitation to anyone holding the prime minister’s office.
“Israel has no stronger ally than the United States and our relationship transcends any one president or any one Prime Minister,” said Schumer in the statement. “I will always welcome the opportunity for the Prime Minister of Israel to speak to Congress in a bipartisan way.”
That statement comes amid ongoing fallout from Schumer’s speech on the Senate floor a week ago, in which he castigated Netanyahu and essentially called for his government to be unseated.
“As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me the Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct. 7,” Schumer said in the speech. “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.”
A range of centrist and right-wing Israeli and American Jewish groups, along with Netanyahu himself, have criticized the speech as inappropriate meddling in an allied deomcracy’s internal affairs. Following a tense conversation with Schumer, an influential Jewish organizational umbrella group said it was “distressed” with his call for new elections. And as a kind of rejoinder to Schumer’s speech, Republican lawmakers invited Netanyahu to address their closed lunch on Wednesday.
Schumer turned down an offer from Netanyahu to address the Democrats’ lunch because he thought the partisan setting was inappropriate. He likewise mentioned bipartisanship in his statement welcoming Netanyahu to give an address to Congress.
If Netanyahu does address Congress, it will be his fourth time doing so. He last spoke to the body in 2015, an address that was controversial because he used it to urge lawmakers to vote down then-President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal.
Johnson extended the invitation while criticizing Schumer’s speech.
“What Chuck Schumer did was was just almost staggering, it’s unbelievable to suggest to our strongest ally in the Middle East, the only stable democracy that he knows better how to run their democracy, it’s just patently absurd,” Johnson told CNBC. He did not respond to a JTA request for comment.
Asked by the CNBC anchor whether he had checked first with Schumer, Johnson said he had not, but suggested that he suspected Schumer would turn him down.
“I’m the one that extends invitations to speak in the House, if we just have the House, that’s fine, too,” he said. “But I think a big majority of the Senate would want to come and stand in support of Netanyahu and Israel.”
Johnson said that in his conversation with Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister invited him to speak to the Knesset. Johnson said it would be an honor to do so.
