Chuck Schumer is a member of the Democratic Party and a United States Senator from the state of New York, who serves as the majority leader of the shambles that was once known as the greatest deliberative body in the world.
Israel is the Jewish state and a sovereign nation founded in 1948 from the ashes of the Holocaust and World War II. Since then, Israel has been involved in 18 wars and large-scale military operations.
Each war is existential. Each determines the fate of a Jewish homeland and Jews — forever. Each is a war for survival against an enemy that is committed to the destruction of both the Jewish state and the Jewish people. The war is fought over land, but the fundamental issue is existence. Interestingly, this aspect of the debate always turns murky.
Does Israel have a right to exist? Do Jews have a right to exist?
The answer to both is yes, but that isn’t the point. Israel and Jews do exist. They have survived.
Today, a terrible war is being fought because Iran has surrounded Israel with a vast military and terror apparatus steeped in war, death and misery. Hamas is a vicious surrogate for the ayatollahs in their pursuit of Israel’s destruction.
The aims of Hamas are clear. They want to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. They have no other agenda and purpose. They do not want to build, dream or create. They want to destroy, hate and kill. This is reality.
The United States stands with Israel because the Jewish state exists, and it must always exist because the endurance of the Jewish people is an urgent concern for humanity. We stand at an hour within a long human lifetime during which there are living survivors of the Nazi atrocity. The stated purpose of Hamas is to finish the job around which humanity committed itself to making certain would never be forgotten and never happen again.
There is a difficult issue in this moment. Benjamin Netanyahu is the corrupt and immoral leader of a moral nation. He heads a government filled with extremists that depends on the war to survive politically. The second that the Israeli government announces it has achieved its strategic goals in Gaza, the Netanyahu government will fall, as the focus turns towards accountability. Hamas is responsible for the danger and murder. Netanyahu is responsible for the selfishness and weakness that invited the attack.
His incompetence was as epic as is his disdain for the rule of law, democracy, human rights, American sovereignty and the concept of restraint. Like Trump, Netanyahu is a lawless man, sustained by a minority coalition that is venomous, vicious, corrupt and extreme. The presence of so many American aircraft carrier battlegroups in the Mediterranean Sea, Arabian Sea and the Red Sea should be an ample demonstration of the direct threat Netanyahu has posed to stability and peace, and thus American security. Though Netanyahu is glib, he has long been dishonest and shallow. Today, he is a threat to Israel’s moral standing, the US alliance with Israel and American democracy.
What does Chuck Schumer think he accomplished with his speech? What was the reaction in Tehran? What about in Gaza? How about in Bibi’s cabinet?
The only thing Schumer accomplished was to box in Netanyahu’s most serious opponents, who now must defend Israeli sovereignty from foreign interference.
What Schumer did was unwise, sloppy and ineffective, so par for the course. Usually, his incompetence manifests itself through missed electoral opportunities and being outmaneuvered by Mitch McConnell, but in this case it will prolong the war, intensify the combat, embolden Tehran, embarrass Secretary Blinken and corner Biden.
I’m going to share two essays that I wrote about what would happen following the October 7th attack by Hamas:
Here we are.
The world is growing more dangerous by the hour. What Chuck Schumer doesn’t seem to grasp is that he is conveying weakness and exhaustion to the people who will decide when to expand the war along Israel’s northern border. Those people are in Iran, and they never stop watching. Ever.
Like I said in October, the wolf is always at the door, and so it bears asking, what is it that the wolf wants?
What does an implacable foe of Israel hope for in this moment? What do the ayatollahs want?
There is something that is deeply important that seems utterly lost on Netanyahu in this terrible moment of war.
Iran is as indifferent to the fate of Hamas as Hamas is to the fate of Palestinian children. Hamas has been militarily weakened, and in some sense, obliterated, but the reality is that the next generation will be ready to kill, and so Hamas will live to fight another day.
Wars begin when aggressors believe the price of the aggression is worth the cost.
For Iran, is the destruction of Hamas — temporarily — worth the cost of Israel’s isolation as an international pariah?
The Jewish state is a civilized nation and a democracy. It is a signatory to the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights and a signatory to the Geneva Conventions. The infliction of mass starvation on the civilian population of Gaza is a crime. Worsening the crime is that it is being imposed as a collective punishment on a defenseless population. Starvation is not a weapon of war. When it becomes one, then it is evidence of war crimes.
There is something that must be said, and it must be at the root of the American position.
The Palestinian people, like all human beings, are made in god’s image. God weeps as fervently for the death of a Palestinian child as he does an Israeli child. The Palestinian people deserve the dignity of statehood and respect. They deserve dignity and freedom.
This must be the American position. It is in our interest. Our interests must be aligned with the shared interests of all those who want to see peace, prosperity and a better future for all people.
The American position is muddled by the urgency of the threat to Israel, and the very real tensions that have erupted within the Democratic Party about the actions of the Netanyahu government. It must be clarified and urgently so.
The United States of America must make it clear to the whole of Israel that we will not interfere in the affairs of an allied nation, but we will not support with weapons and money the starvation of Palestinian children because of Bibi’s obstinacy, which is borne from weakness and immorality.
The United States of America believes in the dignity of all human beings everywhere, and believes they are created equally.
Hamas and Iran strangled a generation of Gazans. Billions of dollars in aid were converted into weapons and tunnels. A death cult grew from a desert of hopelessness. The world looked away until it all exploded.
There have been almost 500,000 casualties in the Russia-Ukraine war. The numbers in Syria are similarly staggering.
Do you know the name for the war that would come when the fighting in Europe, the Middle East, and ultimately Asia, merges together into a contest between free nations and despotic ones? It would be called World War III, and it could absolutely start in the Middle East.
It is helpful to look at how, why and where the first two world wars started, and how they spread. There should be no lack of imagination about the dangers at hand for all people everywhere.
Chuck Schumer made it worse, but he wasn’t wrong about many things. The Senate floor was just the wrong venue in which to say it.
Ask me anything
It’s that time again to ask me anything. Go!
“The only thing Schumer accomplished was to box in Netanyahu’s most serious opponents, who now must defend Israeli sovereignty from foreign interference.”
Steve, I get your point that Schumer is right, but used the wrong forum. I have to respectfully disagree. This is the only forum available to Schumer, and given Netanyahu’s duplicitous nature, and fascist tendencies, this is the only way to make sure the message is received.
As for Iran controlling Hezbollah, I think you give the Iranian’s too much credit. Hezbollah is dependent on Iran, but so is Iran dependent on Hezbollah, as its proxy against Israel, and its enemies in Syria. The relationship is more transactional, than spiritual.
If Hezbollah was going to attack Israel, they would have done so already, but Lebanon's current economic and financial crisis, ranks among the worst economic crises globally since the mid-nineteenth century. There nominal GDP plummeted from close to US$52 billion in 2019 to an estimated US$23.1 billion in 2021 and has only gotten more dire.
And let’s face it, the last time Israel bombed Beirut, it caused long-term severe economic damage and catastrophic infrastructure damage, that Lebanon still hasn’t recovered from. Iran has more control over the Houthi’s than Hezbollah.
And America isn’t doing Israel any favors by supporting Netanyahu with impunity. Israel is becoming a global pariah, and dragging America down with it.
I believe both Biden and Schumer should be applying as much pressure as possible, even having Biden speak before the Israeli Knesset conveying our commitment to Israel, but not Netanyahu and his right-wing government.
Netanyahu deserves payback for how he disrespected Obama, by speaking before a Republican Congress and disparaging the JCPOA before it was completed. He and his right-wing government deserve no quarter.
The sooner Netanyahu is gone, the better it is for all parties involved.
IMHO…:)
Steve, I respectfully disagree with you and I applaud Senator Schumer for his act of immense and impactful political courage in speaking out against the Israeli leadership and Netanyahu in particular. Senator Schumer ‘s speech is a modern day Profile in Courage in an age where true political courage is in short supply.