https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-problem-with-schumers-israel-speech
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has long claimed to be a shomer—Hebrew for guardian or watchman—of Israel and the Jewish people. But his speech last Thursday on the Senate floor, in which he called for new elections in Israel, more readily brings two Yiddish words to mind.
The first word is chutzpah, which connotes arrogance-laced presumption. That perfectly describes Schumer instructing Israel—the only democracy in the entire Middle East—to jettison its elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and hold new elections, or else. Schumer threatened: “[i]f Prime Minister Netanyahu’s current coalition remains in power after the war begins to wind down . . . then the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy.” That is election interference, plain and simple.
The Israeli people are quite capable of deciding when to hold elections and whom to elect, notwithstanding Schumer’s insinuation to the contrary. No foreign politician—even, or especially, one who prefaces his remarks with “as a Jew” and “a life-long supporter of Israel”—has any business interfering with an ally’s democratic processes. Critics might point to Netanyahu’s 2015 address to Congress opposing the proposed Iran nuclear deal. Democrats were livid at the time. But Netanyahu was arguing against a specific agreement that many Americans, and most Israelis, believed posed an existential threat to Israel and the world. He was not advocating for President Obama’s ouster.
Schumer claimed Netanyahu is “allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.” But does anyone doubt Schumer is ditching Israel to save Joe Biden by placating his party’s radical left? Unsurprisingly, Biden praised the speech.
The second word is sechel—common sense or wisdom—something Schumer’s speech clearly lacked. The Senate majority leader claimed that the Israeli people are being “stifled by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.” But the only people stuck in the past are those, like Schumer and the foreign policy establishment, who persist in wanting to impose a two-state solution that Palestinians have never favored and that Israelis, brutalized by decades of intifadas and terrorism culminating in October 7, have given up on.
