Schumer's Sellout

By David M. Friend

Dear Senator Schumer:

Stop calling yourself shomer, a play on your last name, claiming you are a guardian of the Jewish people. You are not.

As anti-Jewish hatred infested American college campuses, you refused to shepherd the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023 through the US Senate.

You played politics with the safety of Jewish Americans, and then blamed the Republicans for not letting you tack the AAA on to a wide-ranging defense bill.

You’ve written a book entitled Antisemitism in America: A Warning, yet you made the crass political decision not to allow a simple yes or no vote to help battle the tidal wave of antisemitism that’s roiling this nation.

Just six months after October 7th, as the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas was raging, you marched onto the floor of the US Senate, and in a scathing rebuke to Israel and its government, you called for regime change in Jerusalem.

You, the leading US Senate Democrat, the most influential Jewish American politician, the highest-ranking Jewish politician ever to be elected in the United States, called on Israelis to boot their democratically elected prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from office.

You branded him as an obstacle to peace, giving succor to Hamas and to Israel’s enemies. You put lots of daylight between America and one of its closest allies in the midst of a bitter war for Israel’s survival.

And if all this wasn’t enough, what you did this past week, endorsing Abdul El-Sayed for the US Senate from Michigan, was the final slap to the Jews of this nation, who desperately need your leadership in their summer of their despair.

You said you spoke with El-Sayed Wednesday, calling it a “great conversation” and you praised him for a “very, very strong campaign.”

A “great conversation”? Did you talk about what he said about Israel, that it’s as bad as Hamas? Did he mention during your convo that Israel has been “an illegal apartheid regime for a very, very long time, that supersedes Netanyahu”?

“Every definition of a Jewish state,” El-Sayed has said, “ends up in some articulation of illiberal values, every one.” Did he mention that on your call?

You say he ran a “very, very strong campaign.” Are you comfortable the campaign was run by demonizing Jewish Americans for contributing to AIPAC?

Have you spoken with Jewish Democrats in Michigan who are petrified about El-Sayed being elected and would rather vote Republican in November?

By endorsing Abdul El-Sayed, you are now in the company of the virulent Jew-hater, Hasan Piker, who New York Congressman Ritchie Torres described as “the poster child for the post-October 7th outbreak of antisemitism in America.” Piker, that very same Jew-hater who said, “It doesn’t matter if rape happened on October 7th” and who has said Hamas is a 1,000 times better than Israel.

Piker’s Jew-hatred runs so deep, he has even blamed Israel for being behind the recent chaotic invasion of tens of thousands of Moroccans into Spain.

Senator, you now stand in the company of a man who said America deserved 9/11 and who wished death upon your colleague, Florida Senator Rick Scott.

Finally and ironically, you’ve endorsed Abdul El-Sayed even though he wants you replaced as the senate Democrat leader. Do you realize how impotent that makes you seem?

Mr. Schumer, you’ve said, “If you have [antisemitism] on the right, and you have it on the left, the Jews feel alone and surrounded. And somehow, at least in history, antisemites of different political persuasions all too often get together and do very bad things to the Jews.”

True. It is wrong Republicans like Vice President JD Vance appear on right wing podcasts where antisemitic tropes are commonplace. It gives them legitimacy.

But, as a student of history, surely you know when Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke ran for Louisiana governor in 1991, Republican Party leaders were clear in their rejection of his candidacy.

President George H.W. Bush and top White House officials repudiated Duke, calling his background abhorrent.

State party leadership actively campaigned against him. They stood up against him.

Senator Schumer, your party has done nothing of the sort with El-Sayed and the other Jew-haters running as Democrats. You’ve not only abandoned the Jewish Democrats of this nation, you’ve abandoned your morality and will do anything to win back the Senate from the Republicans.

You keep saying the Democrat Party has a big tent. Apparently, it’s big enough to shelter antisemites with your blessing.

I hope you like who’s now sitting right next to you under that tent.

I do agree with you on one thing. Jews indeed feel, in your words, alone and surrounded, and you know why? In part because you, Senator Chuck Schumer, the “shomer” of the Jewish people, has abandoned them.

A true “shomer” is a guardian, a protector. You clearly are not.

But in the Jewish religion a “shomer” is also someone who watches over the dead and, as the author Dara Horn says, the world loves dead Jews.

Clearly, you do too.

Yours truly,

Friend Without Benefits