Clarity Over Stabbing Israel in the Back

Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer (The Hill)

The following is a statement from the Agudah about Senator Schumer's recent remarks. They are exactly right and their statement follows in its entirety:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has a long and distinguished record of strongly supporting the security and welfare of the State of Israel and its citizens. Understanding the millennia-old plight and oppression of the Jewish people, his love and devotion toward Israel are intense and deeply personal. He feels the existential threat that Israel faces and the hate and viciousness that surround her. The pain of Israel, as experienced before and after October 7, is his own. And Israel’s desire for peace, too, is his own. Anyone who knows Senator Schumer, and who reads the words of his major address on Middle East peace, knows this to be true.

We are saddened, though, that important aspects of Senator Schumer’s address crossed a line. Indeed, it was the wrong message at the wrong time.

Putting aside the various policy pronouncements and analyses included in his statement, we are deeply concerned that the Senator directly intervened in the internal affairs of a sovereign foreign nation, a robust democracy, and a staunch American ally, by explicitly calling for new Israeli elections and more than intimating what he believes the outcome of those elections should be.

He further asserted that, if there are no new elections in Israel or if new elections in Israel do not result in an outcome that accords with his preferred policy perspectives, then the United States “will have no choice” but to leverage its aid to Israel in a manner that will exert pressure on Israel to divert its actions from what it deems to be in the nation’s best interests and the elected will of the people.

 These intrusive assertions by Senator Schumer would be inappropriate, offensive, and counterproductive at any time. But leveling accusations and criticisms against a steadfast friend during a time of war will only further endanger Israel’s soldiers while they are fighting and dying in pursuit of eradicating the scourge of terrorism.

As the U.S.’s highest-ranking Jewish elected official ever, Senator Schumer has surely reached a pinnacle in American politics. But assuming the role of speaking on behalf of “a silent majority” of American Jewry goes too far. He has no such authority or power. If anything, his historic role and high station in our nation confer upon him the responsibility to carefully heed his words and use them wisely.