You can read Chuck Schumer’s recent op-ed in the NYT, “What American Jews fear most,“, or you can watch his 40-minute speech on the topic given in the Senate (video below). I recommend listening to the speech, of which the op-ed is a short distillation. Alternatively, read the transcript, which you can find here.
Schumer is trying to explain to the Senate why American Jews are especially worried about the rise of antisemitism accompanying the advent of the war between Israel and Hamas. (Schumer notes that after October 7, antisemitic incidents in America have increased threefold.) And, of course, on a per capita basis Jews have long been the religious group more subject to “hate violence”.
Following a brief history lesson, Schumer emphasizes the need for a two-state solution, rejecting the West Bank expansion of the Netanyahu government. Then invoking the “oppressor/oppressed” mantra of progressives, Schumer recounts the history of Jewish oppression from, noting that:
“For Jewish people all across the world, the history of our trauma going back many generations is central to any discussion about our future. . . too many Americans, especially in our younger generations, don’t have a full understanding of this history. Because some Jewish people have done well in America, because Israel has increased its power and territory, there are people who feel that Jewish Americans are not vulnerable, that we have the strength and security to overcome prejudice and bigotry, that we have, to quote the language of some, become the ‘oppressors’.
But for many Jewish Americans, any strength and security that we enjoy always feels tenuous. No matter how well we’re doing, it can all be taken away in an instant.
That’s just how it is. We only have to look back a century, a few generations, to see how this can happen.”
His only family history with the Germans is an example how Jewish freedom—and lives—can vanish in short while.
The YouTube notes:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer delivered a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, decrying the rise in antisemitism since Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7. “We’re deeply sensitive to the deprivation and horrors that can follow the targeting of Jewish people if it is not repudiated,” Schumer said.
Finally, halfway through the speech, Schumer gives what I see as its point: an attempt to make Americans realize how both the events of October 7 and the subsequent defense of Hamas and antisemitic tropes (.e.g, “from the river to the sea”) affects Jewish-Americans especially strongly:
While many protesters no doubt view their actions as a compassionate expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people, for many Jewish Americans, we feel in too many instances, some of the most extreme rhetoric gives license to darker ideas that have always lurked below the surface of every question involving the Jewish people.
Schumer is not normally an eloquent speaker, but this is an eloquent speech, even though it’s read from a script. In the end, I hope he succeeds in warning America that Jewish-Americans are worried that anti-Israel and antisemitic feeling will “metastasize into something worse.” Saying “it can’t happen here” is no consolation.
The peroration, when Schumer describes his grandfather breaking into tears when first setting foot in Israel, is extremely moving.
Again, I recommend that you listen.
h/t: Bat
” “it can’t happen here” ”
There’s two senses in that expression – the one I mean is more “this cannot be allowed to happen here”.
I’m not arguing anything by that, but I’ll say this is a good speech I agree with, and one of those meanings recognizes the power of elected representatives v. “thoughts and prayers”.
OK maybe I was arguing something – I hope that came across the way I mean.
Schumer has always struck me as a publicity hound (the most dangerous place to be in DC is said to be between Schumer and a tv camera) and something of a noodge, but this speech was articulate and moving.
Yep Ken. Noodges can surprise us!
Bravo. Following the 9/11 attacks, president Bush gave me the strong impression that he was out early and often reminding people that muslims in this country are to be off limits for reprisals, and that our enemy is Islamic extremism and specifically Al Qaeda. I felt that his frequent presence in the news during that time had a positive educational effect on people, and that it was a moment of good leadership from that president. Yes, it was terribly clouded with the Iraq war that followed, but that is not what I am singling out here.
In contrast, I don’t really see Biden doing much in the way of educating the masses now. This situation is of course a fair bit different, but the message that is needed from him, put out often and everywhere so that everyone sees it multiple times, is one of a collective cause and shared consensus about who the enemy really is here. The enemy is Hamas (and their Iranian enablers), and that their victims are the Jewish people in Israel and the Palestinians being used as human shields.
An excellent speech.
I think I liked the video over the bare black and white words of the transcript, maybe because the senator is not a great orator, so the words themselves tumbled out with stronger meaning on their own. I was particularly taken by the historical summary he provides in that it matches what we were taught in Hebrew school in the mid-1950’s, barely ten years after the camps of the holocaust were liberated. We were a constant part of a small Southern U.S. community in those days, with the fathers of kids in our neighborhood having served in the ground war in Europe when the concentration camps were found and liberated, and with several members of our Jewish community who had fled Nazi Germany, one of whom was a Holocaust survivor and ran a kosher deli with his camp number still tattooed on his forearm and always a visible reminder to us kids when he wore a short sleeve shirt.
We were taught that Israel, created just a few years before, in the same year as my birth, 1948, was to be a homeland, a defensible homeland for Jews that was set up by the international community after the pogroms of the last century and, particularly the horrors of the then recent holocaust. It was to be a place that welcomed all Jews from anywhere in the world, a place from which they could build a future together and defend themselves against future enemies.
I think that the senator hits those points.
Forgot to say thanks for posting this item, Jerry.
HCR brought Schumer’s speech front and center on her Substack. Because hers is the most-viewed Substack, I think this is a big deal. Last I checked, there were close to 3,000 likes on this post.
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/december-2-2023?r=2xi1r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I just finished watching Schumer’s speech. It was excellent, probably his best speech. It was on a topic that truly matters to him—and to me.
Jews are alone, and the student of history knows that this has always been so. Today’s antisemitism from the left should be a wake-up call to Jews everywhere that the crowd you’ve been running with does not care about you, does not want you, and indeed may want you gone.
Just about every Jewish congregation in my area has a Web site that prominently advertises its programs in “social justice,” which liberal Jews seem to think is a pathway to their acceptance. It is not. What will happen next? I predict that these same Jews who are already sleeping with the enemy will cuddle even closer, rather than learn the lesson that today’s antisemitism teaches us. They need to rethink the company they keep.
Schumer ends his speech with hope that the United States can do what the countries of Europe have not: end antisemitism and all bigotry based on race, ethnicity, or national origin. I hope that he is correct but, if so, we have a long way to go.
+1
Count me against social justice as currently understood, and with the Jews. If it does come to a choice between bigotry against Jews and bigotry against some others — and I think it will — I know which side I will take. By this I mean it might not be possible to cut the extremist Muslims (and antisemitic Leftists) out of the herd and spare the rest of them. So to hell with them all.
I think a lot of people who have respected Zionist Israel for a long time have been fed up with social justice warriors for almost as long. Our models here are people like Douglas Murray. To the extent that we outsiders can influence the policy of our governments, we need to do so. The path is difficult. “Decolonization” and “anti-oppression” are deeply embedded in the political culture of centre-left parties and the noisy adherents form a substantial part of their voter base….and it now feels permitted to voice the antisemitism it has always felt. The social justice warriors whom Jews allied with (especially in the United States, if I have it correct) are showing how quick they are to throw you under the bus when you (and we) face an existential threat in Israel and here at home.
I don’t think you are alone. I damned well hope not.
Bravo, Senator Schumer. That speech was pointed, stately, accurate and sadly, necessary.
A sincere thank you for posting and recommending Sen Schumer’s speech.
I am so grateful that I watched. I will not forget!
I stand in solidarity with his fervent pleas. Americans’ lack of engagement/interest with history–especially the history of the Jewish people throughout millennia– is a very dangerous threat indeed. We all must speak up loud and clear!
Americans must watch/listen to his speech in its entirety.