The Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations, the umbrella body representing the institutional U.S. Jewish community, rebuked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) after a conference call on Tuesday.
The call had been convened to discuss Schumer’s speech on the Senate floor last Thursday, in which he disparaged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and demanded that Israel hold early elections to replace him, mid-war.
In a press release, the leaders of the Conference of Presidents said they “remain distressed” by Schumer’s remarks (emphasis added):
We deeply appreciate Senate Majority Leader Schumer speaking to the membership of the Conference of Presidents this afternoon, as well as his longstanding support of Israel and the Jewish people. His decades of leadership are historic and without precedent.
Even so, the pro-Israel community and our membership continue to have deep reservations about Senator Schumer’s speech on the Senate floor last week regarding impediments to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. We believe that at a time when Israel is fighting an existential war, on the embers of the 1200 innocents massacred on October 7th, it is not a time for public criticisms that serve only to empower the detractors of Israel, and which foster greater divisiveness, when unity is so desperately needed.
Our member organizations, representing the broad swath of American Jewry, remain distressed that an American official would tell a sovereign, democratic ally when to conduct its electoral process and assert that the U.S. should possibly “play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change present course.’’ In actuality, what is really needed is U.S. leverage to bolster and support the Jewish state in this time of need.
We find it most unfortunate that Senator Schumer’s stated barriers to peace included the Hamas Terror Army and the democratically elected Prime Minister of Israel in the same breath. Hamas’ unwillingness to release the hostages, lay down its arms, and surrender are the actual barriers to peace.
The U.S.-Israel relationship has weathered many disagreements through close and confidential discussion of its leadership, which continues to be the appropriate forum for such conversations.
Schumer’s speech was praised by President Joe Biden, who endorsed his call to replace Netanyahu, though there are now reports that Biden is privately trying to backtrack, aware that it has cost his administration credibility in Israel.
On Tuesday, Schumer tried to portray himself as magnanimous, telling the New York Times that he had held back on calling for Netanyahu to step down immediately. “That is telling Israel what to do, and it’s in the middle of a war.”
It was unclear how Schumer hoped to distinguish telling Netanyahu to step down in the middle of a war from telling Israel to hold early elections in the middle of a war, or at least before the war against Hamas had completely ended.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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