Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has agreed to join House Speaker Mike Johnson on an invitation for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress — weeks after the Brooklyn Democrat urged a new election in the Jewish state with the aim of removing the PM from office.
“Sen. Schumer intends to join the invitation, the timing is being worked out,” a spokesman for Schumer’s office told The Post on Friday.
Netanyahu, 74, has addressed Congress three times, with his last speech delivered months before the Obama administration signed on to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
The only other foreign leader to address joint meetings of Congress three times was British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who did so in 1941, 1943 and 1952.
Schumer (D-NY) opposed the Iran deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — but three years later advocated against former President Donald Trump pulling out of the arrangement to curtail Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
Johnson (R-La.) announced in March he was planning to invite Netanyahu to speak to members of Congress — one week after Schumer had declared the Israeli leader an “obstacle” to peace in the Middle East.
In a March 14 Senate floor speech denouncing Netanyahu and “radical” members of his security cabinet, Schumer, 73, called for new elections in Israel once its war against Hamas “starts to wind down,” declaring it was “the only way” to secure the Jewish state’s future.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was quick to rebuke his Democratic counterpart for the “unprecedented” remark.
“The Jewish state of Israel deserves an ally that acts like one,” McConnell said in his own floor speech. “And Israel’s unity government and security cabinet deserve the deference befitting a sovereign, democratic country.”
“The primary obstacles to peace in Israel’s region are genocidal terrorists, like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who slaughter innocent people, and corrupt leaders of the Palestinian Authority who have repeatedly rejected peace deals from multiple Israeli governments,” the Republican leader added.
“Israel is a sovereign democracy,” Jerusalem’s Ambassador to the US Michael Herzog also posted on X at the time.
“It is unhelpful, all the more so as Israel is at war against the genocidal terror organization Hamas, to comment on the domestic political scene of a democratic ally. It is counterproductive to our common goals.”
Asked about Johnson’s invitation to Bibi in March, Schumer replied, “Israel has no stronger ally than the United States and our relationship transcends any one president or any one Prime Minister.”
“I will always welcome the opportunity for the Prime Minister of Israel to speak to Congress in a bipartisan way,” Schumer added.
House Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also called on Netanyahu to resign in April.
President Biden and congressional Democrats have pressured Netanyahu for temporary cease-fires at various points during Israel’s nearly seven-month-long war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Those negotiations have in recent weeks stalled the planned Israel Defense Forces invasion of Rafah, the last stronghold of Hamas, which has lost much of its terror forces since massacring an estimated 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Biden, 81, and the White House have issued guarded statements about supporting the Israeli military’s actions throughout the war, as far-left Democrats in Congress and anti-Israel agitators nationwide have harshly criticized Netanyahu’s actions.
Tens of thousands of “uncommitted” votes in US Democratic primaries from Muslim and Arab American voters have also posed a threat to the president’s re-election campaign in battleground states like Michigan.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was the last foreign dignitary to address US lawmakers, delivering a speech in April that spurred both chambers to “deter aggression and ensure peace” against growing military and nuclear threats from China, Russia and North Korea.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) became the second congressional leader in US history to deliver a speech to Israel’s parliament, or Knesset, last year.
