AMAC EXCLUSIVE
Going back to his school days, Chuck Schumer was known as a very smart fellow. His brains evidently got him somewhere, as he is now the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, the fourth most powerful position in the American government. He also is the highest ranked Jewish elected official ever — none of his faith has yet been elected president, vice president or Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Not everyone likes Schumer — he is a very partisan Democrat with a sharp tongue — but he is respected, popular in his home state of New York, and generally well-regarded in the Jewish community. The latter was earned through many years of stalwart support of the State of Israel.
But now, with one colossal mistake of a speech, Chuck Schumer has thrown away his community’s high regard and burned some of the essential bridges that buttress his power and position.
Just before March 15, Schumer spoke on the floor of the Senate and denounced the elected government of Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, calling for him to be overthrown. “The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct. 7,” Schumer said. “At this critical juncture, I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel.”
By coincidence, the next day was the Ides of March, the notorious date when several Roman senators conspired to assassinate the Roman leader Julius Caesar by stabbing him to death. Caesar’s last words were reportedly of shock and disbelief that his close friend Brutus was among the conspirators: “Et Tu, Brute?” You, too, Brutus?
Schumer, despite political differences, was Netanyahu’s longtime personal friend. Even more significant, Schumer knows Israel is engaged in a life-or-death struggle for survival in Gaza with a terrorist Hamas army that invaded Israel on October 7, killing and raping 1,200 persons, many of them civilian women and children, and taking more than 200 as hostages, including American citizens.
Schumer also knew well that Israel had in the past turned over the Gaza Strip and let the Palestinians choose their own government which soon was dominated by Hamas, an anti-Israel terrorist faction living in Gaza.
Schumer knew Israel had no choice after the murderous October 7 invasion but to send its citizen army, the IDF, into Gaza to destroy Hamas’s ability to attack the Jewish state and harm its citizens ever again.
Schumer knew that the civilian casualties caused by the IDF were well below the numbers the Hamas propaganda group was reporting in order to gain international sympathy for Gaza, and that the terrorists were hiding among civilians and using them as shields. Hamas also placed their bases of operation near or inside hospitals and schools — all violations of international law. Schumer was aware that the IDF was, in fact, making historic efforts to protect civilians as it sought to find the terrorists and eliminate them.
Schumer knew all of this, which clearly contradicted the spurious allegation of Israel wantonly harming Gazan civilians, as reported daily by media that are hostile to Israel.
Schumer knew all this, but he had a political problem: it is a national election year, and the far left of his party is vehemently anti-Israel and in some cases openly pro-Hamas. His fellow Democrat, President Joe Biden, is running for re-election, and the Pro-Hamas Democrats were threatening to withhold their votes from the incumbent who had come out generally on Israel’s side. In the Michigan primary and other primaries, a small but notable number of these radicals voted “no preference” to demonstrate their opposition to Biden’s pro-Israel policy.
Understandably, Biden made gestures to placate his left wing, and his support for the Netanyahu government began to shift.
As international support for Israel waned, abetted by Hamas propaganda, Biden finally tried to restrain the IDF from completing their mission at the last Hamas stronghold in south Gaza, as well as force the Israelis to agree to a ceasefire, despite Hamas’s unwillingness to compromise in good faith.
With overwhelming support in Israel, and in U.S. public opinion, Netanyahu rejected Biden’s pressure. The U.S. media had long been conducting an anti-Netanyahu campaign, and so it became necessary for Democrats to strike a major political blow against the Israeli prime minister to force his hand.
Did Joe Biden ask, or even demand, that Chuck Schumer call for Netanyahu’s ouster in a Senate speech?
Or did the highly partisan majority leader, knowing his prestige in the Jewish community, decide to throw his political weight around? Or both?
It doesn’t much matter who caused it to happen. Schumer’s classmate in high school, former St. Paul mayor and former fellow U.S. Senator Norm Coleman, now the head of the Republican Jewish Coalition, called Schumer’s speech a “disgrace,” and a stab in the back. It was likely even worse – it was likely “stupid.”
Placating some leftist Democrats (who have nowhere else to go in November) might regain some base votes, but a far larger number of liberal Jewish votes and pro-Israel evangelical Christian votes are more likely to be lost by this Biden-Schumer misadventure. With polls showing black and Hispanic Democrats shifting to the GOP, this anti-Israel strategy seems obviously self-defeating.
After his final words to Brutus, Caesar succumbed. But after he now says, “Et tu, Chuck,” Bibi Netanyahu, with Israeli voter support and U.S. public opinion behind him, will still be in charge and hopefully leading the IDF to complete their mission in Gaza.
The proper election that will change governments in 2024 will not be in Israel, but in the United States.
Next January, with a new U.S. president, and Schumer reduced to be a feckless minority leader, the last laugh of this sad episode might be heard in Jerusalem.
Herald Boas is a writer for AMAC Newsline.
