Israel Matzav: I guess Schumer didn't coordinate with the White House and anti-Semitism is alive and well in America

Saturday, August 08, 2015

I guess Schumer didn't coordinate with the White House and anti-Semitism is alive and well in America

Dear @SenSchumer -- one decision your Party doesn't like and they call you a greedy disloyal Jew -- think about that pic.twitter.com/jum4vQTZjN
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) August 8, 2015

Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.

When Chuck Schumer came out against the Iran sellout on Thursday night, I considered the possibility that he had coordinated with New York's Junior Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, and with the Obama White House, so that Gillibrand would come out in favor so that the White House would have one New York vote, and Schumer could protect his Senate seat by coming out against. I should have known better.

The Obama White House - and the entire Left wing of the Democratic party (the so-called 'progressives') have gone to war against Chuck Schumer. The tweets embedded above are the least of it. For example, the Left-leaning Jewish Tablet Magazine has all but called out the Obama administration for being anti-Semitic (more at Memeorandum).

What we increasingly can’t stomach—and feel obliged to speak out about right now—is the use of Jew-baiting and other blatant and retrograde forms of racial and ethnic prejudice as tools to sell a political deal, or to smear those who oppose it. Accusing Senator Schumer of loyalty to a foreign government is bigotry, pure and simple. Accusing Senators and Congressmen whose misgivings about the Iran deal are shared by a majority of the U.S. electorate of being agents of a foreign power, or of selling their votes to shadowy lobbyists, or of acting contrary to the best interests of the United States, is the kind of naked appeal to bigotry and prejudice that would be familiar in the politics of the pre-Civil Rights Era South.

This use of anti-Jewish incitement as a political tool is a sickening new development in American political discourse, and we have heard too much of it lately—some coming, ominously, from our own White House and its representatives. Let’s not mince words: Murmuring about “money” and “lobbying” and “foreign interests” who seek to drag America into war is a direct attempt to play the dual-loyalty card. It’s the kind of dark, nasty stuff we might expect to hear at a white power rally, not from the President of the United States—and it’s gotten so blatant that even many of us who are generally sympathetic to the administration, and even this deal, have been shaken by it.

Schumer's announcement has also brought Stephen Walt's anti-Semitism out of the woodwork.

David Bromwich tells it like it is re opposition to #IranDeal: Netanyahu and His Marionettes http://t.co/1wnlXYVAF6 via @HuffPostPol
— Stephen Walt (@stephenWalt) August 8, 2015

Sellout Sen. Schumer thinks he knows more about pros/cons of #IranDeal than 29 nuclear scientists. http://t.co/H6SD1pKlr6
— Stephen Walt (@stephenWalt) August 8, 2015

Schumer has also said that he will vote to override an Obama veto of a resolution of disapproval of the deal. That means that Schumer's fallout with the 'progressives' may be permanent.

Credo Action is not alone. Dylan Williams, the political director of J Street, a Jewish group campaigning for the Iran deal, tweeted last night, "Seeing lots of Democratic heavy-hitters noting that, unlike the #IranDeal, there are alternatives to Chuck Schumer."

Steve Rabinowitz, a Democratic communications consultant who works with Jewish organizations, told me Friday that Schumer was in a "lose-lose situation." At the same time, Rabinowitz speculated that Schumer could turn it into a win-win and retain progressive support to be Democratic leader in the Senate if he voted against the deal initially but didn't press his colleagues to do so, and then voted against overriding an Obama veto of the resolution of disapproval.

"Now we just have to see if he really whips his colleagues, I hope not, and if there is a veto override vote, what he does," Rabinowitz told me. "If he doesn't whip his colleagues, and he votes with the president after a veto, then he will have a way to have it almost both ways. I am disappointed, but I get it. I get all these members and Jews going the other way, it bums me out, but I get it."

Based on what his staff told me Friday, however, that's not the plan: Schumer will stand against the deal no matter what. The question now for New York's senior senator is whether progressive Democrats who support the Iran nuclear agreement will go the other way on Schumer's candidacy to lead his party in the Senate after Harry Reid retires.

Schumer may have blown his chance to be party leader in the Senate (even that is doubtful, because the vote will be one of his Senate colleagues and I haven't heard any of them attacking him). But his apparently principled stand will likely mean he will keep his Senate seat.

Labels: anti-Semitism, Charles Schumer, Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, Israel Lobby, Obama's anti-Semitism, Stephen Walt, United States Senate