Where is the Democratic National Committee?
The New York Times recently headlined:
Schumer Urges New Leadership in Israel, Calling Netanyahu an Obstacle to Peace
The top Senate Democrat, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the United States, spoke from the Senate floor to condemn Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and call for elections to replace him.
In other words, Schumer was making a point of interfering in Israel’s domestic politics, to, as the Times said, “call for elections to replace [Netanyahu].”
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell replied, per the Times: “that it was ‘grotesque and hypocritical’ for Americans ‘who hyperventilate about foreign interference in our own democracy to call for the removal of the democratically elected leader of Israel.’ He called Mr. Schumer’s move ‘unprecedented.’”
Bingo.
So let’s take a trip down memory lane to the stone age time of 2018 — and this headline from the Washington Post:
Democratic Party sues Russia, Trump campaign and WikiLeaks alleging 2016 campaign conspiracy
This gem of a story reports:
The Democratic National Committee filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit Friday against the Russian government, the Trump campaign and the WikiLeaks organization alleging a far-reaching conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 campaign and tilt the election to Donald Trump.
The complaint, filed in federal district court in Manhattan, alleges that top Trump campaign officials conspired with the Russian government and its military spy agency to hurt Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and help Trump by hacking the computer networks of the Democratic Party and disseminating stolen material found there.
“During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russia launched an all-out assault on our democracy, and it found a willing and active partner in Donald Trump’s campaign,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez said in a statement.
How far the Democrats have come in the change department in a mere six years.
Now the Democrats’ Senate majority leader stands up on the Senate floor and does exactly what the DNC was so angry about in 2016 that it sued the Russian government: interfering in a foreign nation’s election politics. (READ MORE: Al Aqsa Mosque: New York Times Ignores History)
Over there in the Wall Street Journal, former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, Democrat turned independent and Democrat Al Gore’s 2000 running mate, penned a response to Schumer headlined:
Schumer Has Crossed a Red Line Over Israel
His speech last week is evidence that his party is catering to those who are hostile to the Jewish state.
Lieberman writes this, with bold print for emphasis supplied:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer last Thursday crossed a political red line that had never before been breached by a leader of his stature and never should be again. In a speech on the Senate floor, he told the people of Israel—one of our closest allies, a true democracy that is at war with an enemy that hates America as well as the Jews—that they should vote their prime minister out of office because “he has lost his way.”…
While Mr. Schumer’s statement undoubtedly pleased American critics of Israel, for the Israelis it was meaningless, gratuitous and offensive.
Mr. Schumer ended his argument by lecturing our Israeli friends that if Mr. Netanyahu and his coalition remain in power, “then the U.S. will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israel’s policy by using our leverage to change the present course.” This is a shocking statement that treats Israel differently from other American allies by threatening to intervene in their domestic democratic politics. In making American support for Israel conditional, Mr. Schumer harms Israel’s credibility among its allies and enemies alike.
Mr. Schumer’s statement will have every other democratic ally of the U.S. worrying that America may try to bully our way into its domestic politics. That will diminish our allies’ loyalty to us. Without dependable allies, we will have a much harder time protecting America’s security, prosperity and freedom.
Exactly.
Well aside from the offensive idiocy of interfering in an ally’s domestic politics, Schumer’s statement — and, yes, he is Jewish — is a hat tip to the far left of his party that has become viscerally anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. Taking account of exactly this, Lieberman also wrote:
Mr. Schumer has a record of supporting Israel. That makes his equivocation a particularly troubling and disappointing sign that the Democratic Party is catering to members and voters who are hostile to the Jewish state.
This is indeed now a political party that celebrates the decidedly anti-Semitic “Squad” and its Israel/Jew–hating members.
A little history is in order here.
The very existence of Israel in the late 1940s came about in no small measure because of the staunch support for the creation of Israel from the Democrat then in the White House — President Harry S. Truman. It was Truman who, upon Israel’s creation, made it a point to have the United States be the first nation to recognize its existence.
An editorial in the Washington Star newspaper in the day applauded Truman and “the swift and dramatic decision of the United States to take the lead among all nations in recognizing the new Jewish State of Israel. It is a wise decision and a heartening one.”
Indeed, it was.
What Truman decidedly did not do upon extending the United States recognition was inject himself or the U.S. government into the internal politics of Israel — something that, all these decades later, Schumer is doing.
In the end, does it matter? Schumer is, on this subject, a voice in the wilderness. And he made his situation by rejecting the idea of Netanyahu coming to D.C. and addressing the Democrats in the Senate’s Democrat caucus.
But over on the House side, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has now extended an invitation to Netanyahu to come to Washington and address a joint session of Congress in the House chamber.
The hard fact here is that Schumer’s statement has brought nothing but bad PR to the left-wing of his party and its virulent anti-Semitism.
Foolish for Democrats indeed. And not good at all.