It's the Brian Laris Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. I want to start today by playing a few clips from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's Israel-Palestine speech on the Senate

floor yesterday that are not the simple soundbite you've probably been hearing in the newscasts

about Benjamin Netanyahu. And then we'll have a conversation with two guests about how to get to

yes on some kind of ceasefire. Israel and Hamas are stuck in those negotiations, as you probably

know, and reports are that scores of civilians or more are still being killed every day, as well as the

fact that the Israeli hostages continue to be held. So there's tremendous urgency from a humanitarian standpoint, but like with any

ceasefire, it will take both warring parties to agree. But first of these speech excerpts from Schumer,

we have the luxury of time on this show, unlike the news programs with a tighter clock,

so we'll stretch out just a little bit beyond what they can do.

What you probably have heard that I won't bother to replay is that Schumer called Prime Minister

Netanyahu an obstacle to peace and a two-state solution, along with Hamas, Palestinian Authority

Leader Mahmoud Abbas, and radical right Israelis. He mentioned all four of those.

You've probably heard that Schumer called for new elections in Israel once the war in Gaza starts to wind down

and accused Netanyahu of being too willing to tolerate the civilian death toll in Gaza and of pushing Israel toward the status of a pariah state.

Should we use that term?

Pariah.

That's the part you probably know.

And that by itself is a very big deal.

The Israeli newspaper Ha'Aritz, for example, called the speech a watershed moment

in Israel-U.S. relations.

Fred Kaplan, who writes about the Middle East for Slate, had an article with the headline that the speech seems like a turning point.

But here are a few more Schumer excerpts. Number one, right at the beginning of the speech,

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