To make Israel a partisan issue only hurts Israel and the US-Israeli relationship,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had the temerity to say only days after demanding the Jewish state’s duly elected government be toppled.
Schumer was responding to Donald Trump’s hyperbolic contention that Jews who vote for Democrats “hate Israel” and their religion. And to be fair, Trump isn’t exactly right.
Some progressive Jews hate Israel — for all the reasons socialists hate the United States. Others hate their faith, which is why they’re constantly creating bogus denominations of Judaism based more on leftist rites than any Jewish culture or theology. Other Jews, sadly, are far too comfortable wallowing in generational victimhood to support a strong Jewish state. Many others simply don’t care.
Schumer, though, doesn’t hate his religion. He’s a devout practitioner. Israel is being offered up as a sacrifice to the partisan gods. And, as the Democrat Party moves further to the left, and progressivism becomes the ideological hinge on which all issues turn, it will become increasingly antagonistic toward the Jewish state.
Even nominally pro-Israel Democrats have now adopted a vile bothsidesism meant to placate the pro-Hamas Left. When Schumer demanded Israel dissipate its elected government on the floor of the Senate, he also made morally reprehensible comparisons between right-wing “extremists” in Israel and the Palestinians who sexually torture, murder and kidnap women and children.
In functional terms, Schumer is on the side of the Hamas boosters in Dearborn and Islamist regimes. So pardon me if I’m not overly offended by Trump’s statement.
Trump bypassed the intractable Palestinians to forge wider agreements between Israel and Sunni Arab nations. President Joe Biden immediately returned the United States to the Obama-era policy of coddling the Islamic theocracy in Iran, opening vast resources for them to plow into proxy wars across the Middle East.
Trump stripped funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which Israelis warned for years was bolstering Hamas attacks. One of the first things Biden did was restore that cash flow. We now know that U.N. workers not only materially assisted Hamas but participated in the sexual torture, murder and kidnapping of women and children on Oct. 7.
Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, putting an end to the fantasy that the capital city would be shared with the Palestine Liberation Organization or Hamas or any other entity. Biden and Democrats began pushing for a “two-state” solution only days after a Palestinian government launched its gruesome, medieval attack on Jews.
If you’re more offended by Trump’s hyperbole than you are by the Biden administration hiring a Hamas-boosting Rob Malley to “negotiate” with the Jew-haters in Iran, maybe you’re not pro-Israel. Democrats are more inclined to whine about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s milquetoast press releases than they are to bring up the fact that Iranian assets are working in the Pentagon.
The only party clamoring to save Hamas right now is the Democrat Party. Biden claims he continues to “affirm that Israel has a right to go after Hamas” but also wants a ceasefire. Those positions are in direct conflict, as the president accidentally admitted in an interview last week. Hamas, Biden told MSNBC, wanted a ceasefire to “survive” and “rebuild.” A ceasefire now, when Israel is at the cusp of eliminating the terror group, is a pro-Hamas position.
Obviously, there is antisemitism on the right and left. But only progressives put on widespread virulent antisemitic protests these days. Only elected Democrats are spreading blood libels and accusing Jews of dual loyalty. Only elected Democrats and liberal cable news networks are repeating Hamas propaganda as fact. And right now, only Democrats are pushing Israel to create a three-front terror state on its borders.
Like Barack Obama, Biden has been far tougher on Benjamin Netanyahu than he ever was on Iranian mullahs — repeating Hamas’ concocted causality numbers last week to feed the phony “genocide” narrative, when Israel has done more to protect civilians during urban war than perhaps any other nation.
Unlike Obama, Biden is not driven by ideological motivations. He’s just a weak, feckless man devoid of any real principles. Privately, for instance, Biden allegedly told Netanyahu that he is not trying to oust him. Which, if true, means he is only doing so publicly to placate his pro-terror wing.
How is this not a partisan issue?
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books — the most recent, “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.” His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on Twitter @davidharsanyi.
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“He’s just a weak, feckless man devoid of any real principles.” You described Biden perfectly.
One item that has recently come to light: the head Rabbi in Jerusalem has issued a decree for Jewish centers in the West to start up traveling funds for Jews who wish to return to Israel. There has not been an exodus of Jews from the West as the world has seen already from the North, South and East. This is another indication that the End Times are coming soon. The article basically is saying that the Left will start persecuting the Jews in our nation.
What kind of Jew is Schumer? The worst kind, I suspect. I am ashamed of our leaders.
Biden is a puppet Obama is a moslem We live with the consequences of his ideology That he was elected twice speaks volumes of the shady influence and manipulation behind the curtain
Hamas recently committed over 1200 acts of pre-meditated murder, including be-headings, and accompanied by hundreds of acts of abuse of corpse, rape and assault, even in the presence of small children. They also committed roughly two hundred kidnappings, and made used their captives as human shields in damp, cold, underground caves.
Because Hamas had already been disposed to engaging in these types of behaviors for many years leading up to this horrible event, it is no surprise that Israel chose to exercise it’s right to defend itself by permanently disabling Hamas from launching similar attacks against Israel from a “next door” platform, ever again. WHO WOULDN’T ???
The World can be an opinionated place, so, becoming the most notable murderer and torturer of innocent families, women and children in the middle east was certainly not the best way to keep living in relative safety.
Obviosly, if annihilation was not identified as a risk in planning this “project”, then that would also seem to make this aggressor the world’s most notable practitioner of… abject stupidity.
It’s become pretty obvious that the Leftists and Uniparty are wanting world war. “10 elitist billionaires building bomb shelters in Hawaii.” Hmmmm… what happened on Maui earlier in Biden’s administration? That in and of itself is an ultimate evil. Of equal concern is, looking at every democrat administration’s ability to wage (micromanage) war starting with LBJ, they’ve proven themselves to be the most incompetent, inept, and extremely dangerous to our own side, as is the opponent. Trump kept the peace. It took him a couple years to purge his cabinet of RINOs and neoCons, but he kept the peace and he built bridges and made competitors out of adversaries. Obama/Biden destroyed ALL of it. Our economy, our sovereignty, our national identity, our energy independence; everything. It is no accident, it is deliberate. Even as evil and corrupt and stupid and disingenuous as the left is. Everything they touch turns to crap, and it’s their goal.
That Israel is a partisan issue is not surprising as much as genital mutilation, chemical castration, and puberty blockers for children in the name of the TQ in LGBTQ+ is! I mean what kind of human being advocates this? On kids?!
Yes. President Biden gives the impression that he is not in charge and does not care.
Yes. President Biden gives the impression that he is not in charge and does not care.
The Israel Issue is certainly a dilemma. It is becoming more and more clear that Israel will have to make its own decisions without the support (financial aid, military arms, etc.) of the United States. It is so maddening that the disdain of Israel by Hamas and Iran is not an easy issue to resolve. The United States would not like any country telling it what to do and neither should Israel. This is a very important lesson for all of us; that is to not hate your enemy. A major disaster may happen in the Middle East. This is so sad.
I always like Harsanyi columns.
I’d like to see more of his work in AMAC.
This is a disgrace. Israel is a foreign country and has become an enormous liability. The lobby has bought our politicians. They are engaging in a massive massacre. Why does AMAC even talk about this? Israel doesn’t care about America and promotes us going to war. Wake Up!
Of course our Totalitarian Communist Democrat Party wants to support Hamas and ditch Israel as they are the same thing.They have been supporting funding terrorism worldwide since Obama was in office.Another reason they hate Trump!Because he threw a wrench into there evil plans and gave America a breather.