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In more than 44 minutes of carefully scripted minutes on the Senate floor Thursday, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke about his Jewish identity, his love for the state of Israel and the Oct. 7 He spoke about his fear and his own views on the senseless slaughter of Israelis. Regarding the apportionment of responsibility for the massacre in Gaza, he said it lies first and foremost with Hamas terrorists.
Schumer, a New York Democrat and the highest-ranking Jew in U.S. history, then called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an obstacle to peace and called for new elections in the world’s only Jewish state. asked to do so.
Opponents didn’t have much trouble.
Within minutes, House Republican leaders demanded an apology. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky declared, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname. “Don’t get me wrong, the Democratic Party doesn’t have an anti-Bibi problem.” He has an anti-Israel problem. ” and the Republican Jewish Federation declared that “the most powerful Democrat in Congress has stabbed the Jewish state in the back with a knife.”
The months following the October 7 massacre and the subsequent and devastating war in Gaza were torn between the liberal traditions that had dominated much of Jewish politics and the anti-Israel reaction of the political left. It was unbearable for American Jews. As a result, many people feel isolated and sometimes even persecuted.
But Mr. Schumer’s speech could have been a turning point in a longer political process, initially pursued by Republicans but recently joined by left-wing Democrats, to turn Israel into a partisan issue. In their view, the Republican Party is a pro-Israel party. The Democratic Party will become the party of Palestine, as will the new left.
At the root of this division is a fundamental problem. The question is: Can support for the Jewish state be separated from support for the democratically elected government of Israel? Republicans have been saying no for years. Another perspective, which the Democratic left increasingly agrees with, is that Israel is bad regardless of who governs it.
“The electoral, social, and cultural pressures on American Jews are now unrelenting, unrelenting, and at times downright vicious” for the justice of the war in Gaza and the legitimacy of the Israeli prime minister, David said. Told. Mr. Wolpe is a prominent rabbi in Los Angeles and a visiting scholar at Harvard School of Divinity.
Schumer’s speech and the partisan response that followed added to that pressure.
Matthew Brooks, the longtime chief executive of the Republican Jewish Federation, said “there is no underestimating how shocking this was,” and the Republican Jewish Federation used the speech to He has made it clear that he intends to sway Jewish voters to the Republican Party.
Republicans accused Mr. Schumer of trying to force an election at a time when the majority of Israelis support and are focused on the war against Hamas, but the Senate majority leader was in fact aware of Israeli public opinion. He noted that “too many Israelis have lost confidence in the government’s vision and direction,” a statement backed up by opinion polls that show Netanyahu’s deep unpopularity. has been done. Mr. Schumer was also careful to say that elections should only be held “after the war begins to subside” and that he would respect the results.
The Jewish Democratic Party has long argued that support for the Jewish state in the Jewish people’s traditional homeland is intrinsic to their identity, regardless of the government in power in Jerusalem. Schumer tried to make that point from the beginning of Thursday’s speech, explaining that his last name comes from the Hebrew word for “guardian.” he said:shomer Israel -He is the protector of the people of Israel. ”
But his speech comes at a time when support among Democrats for what independent Sen. Bernie Sanders from Vermont calls “Netanyahu’s war” is dwindling, with loud voices on the left arguing that the state of Israel is essentially It was done in an incendiary moment, which claims to be wrong. “Settler colonialists” are intruders incompatible with the rights and sovereignty of the Palestinian people who lived there before Israel’s independence in 1948.
“While the overwhelming majority of American Jews support Israel and its right to exist as a Jewish state, an increasingly vocal minority does not support Israel as a Jewish state and supports its right to exist as a Jewish state. “There is a division that rejects what happened in 1948 to ensure the security of the nation. The nation survived,” said Michael J. Koplau, chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum, a Washington-based research group. said Friday from Israel.
He added: “Mr. Schumer needed to have a way to criticize the Israeli government without even getting close to Camp 2, which is why he initially talked about Hamas’ responsibility and his love for Israel. That’s why I spent so much time on it.”
But in a political moment like this, the term Schumer used to lament the “silent majority” of Jews whose “nuanced views have never been expressed in discussions about the Gaza war” The concept of “nuance” probably would not have worked at all. Don’t sink in.
Republicans did not publicly commit to using Schumer’s words against him. The National Republican Senatorial Committee sent out a flood of emails to vulnerable Democrats up for re-election this year asking them to voice their opposition to Schumer’s views.
Norm Coleman, a former Republican senator from Minnesota who attended New York public schools with Mr. Schumer and is now chairman of the Republican Jewish Federation, said Friday that bipartisan forces over his support for Israel have condemned Mr. Schumer. He said it may have disappeared. Netanyahu and the call for new elections. He accused Schumer of saying President Biden’s woes with Arab Americans, especially in the battleground state of Michigan, are politically motivated.
“I don’t believe Mr. Schumer speaks for American Jews,” Coleman said. “He’s worried about the left now, he’s worried about the state of Michigan, as Democratic majority leader, and he’s telling democratically elected governments in democracies that they shouldn’t be the government anymore.” I think he is making a speech saying that there is no such thing.”
Even some moderate Jewish Democrats, like Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, have criticized Schumer’s call for new elections in Israel, which he calls “the only true democracy in the region.” They criticized it as interfering in the situation of those who called it.
But for many older liberal Jews, Schumer’s words were a tonic. These are shared pain over the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and frustration with the Israeli government, including far-right ministers (who Schumer called out by name), who are adamantly opposed to any peace concessions. It was clearly expressed. Or Palestinian sovereignty. His words also signaled Democrats’ growing desire to use what Schumer called “leverage” tied to billions of American tax dollars flowing to Israel’s military.
Daniel G. Zemel, a Washington, D.C., Reform rabbi and advocate of “liberal Zionism,” said Schumer’s prescription is “exactly what American Jews need.”
“We need a different approach,” he said, pushing back against those who called Schumer’s prescriptions anti-democratic. “As a rabbi and as a Jew, I have a right and a duty to say what I want Israel to be in this world.”
Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and chairman of the Jewish Congressional Caucus, said: Schumer posted on social media: “That’s right,” he added, adding that “Prime Minister Netanyahu is an obstacle to peace and a two-state solution.”
Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois has criticized activists who harass her as “genocidal Jean” and her personal comments that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state alongside sovereign Palestinians. He is one of the progressive Jewish Democrats who feels torn between his own beliefs. state. She acknowledged it was a “tough moment” for politicians like herself, but said Friday that Schumer represents the majority of Jews in the United States and Israel.
She pointed to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech in Congress in 2015 to pressure President Barack Obama to abandon the nuclear deal with Iran, and the idea that Schumer was undermining Israeli democracy. was vehemently denied.
“Right now, we’re hungry for a different path, and that’s what Schumer courageously spoke about,” she said. “Most Israelis and American Jews understand the importance and essential role that the United States plays. But we feel like Bibi is thumbing its nose at us.”
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