WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sounded the alarm Wednesday over a “spike in antisemitism” that he said was fueled by pro-Hamas “dogwhistles” at protests denouncing Israel — while a Jewish teacher forced to hide last week from a mob in her Queens school looked on from the gallery.
In an emotional 40-minute admonition, Schumer (D-NY) blasted fellow Democrats and news outlets for their response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of about 1,200 people across southern Israel and the Jewish state’s subsequent invasion of the Gaza Strip.
“Jewish Americans feel alone to face all of this — abandoned by too many of our friends and allies in our greatest time of need, as antisemitic hate crimes skyrocket across the country,” said Schumer, who also published a New York Times op-ed Wednesday in which he called antisemitism a “five-alarm fire.”
The 73-year-old Schumer, the most powerful Democrat in Congress and the highest-ranking Jew in US politics, recounted the murder of his great-grandmother and extended family in Ukraine by the Nazis in 1941, and likened Adolf Hitler’s slogans to those used in modern-day protests.
“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 Jewish people,” he said.
“Antisemites have always trafficked in coded language and action to define Jewish people as unworthy of the rights and privileges afforded to other groups.”
Although the Brooklyn Democrat didn’t name alleged spreaders of antisemitism, some of his references — such as to The Nation magazine, which recently branded a large pro-Israel gathering in DC a “hate rally” — were clear.
Schumer repeatedly blasted the chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) recently defended before the Republican-led House voted on Nov. 7 to censure her.
“Can you blame the Jewish people for hearing a violently antisemitic message loud and clear anytime we hear that chant?” Schumer asked.
“We shouldn’t accept this sort of language from anybody, any more than we accept other racist dogwhistles like invoking ‘welfare queens’ to criticize safety net programs or calling COVID-19 the ‘Chinese virus’.”
Schumer later asked: “Can you understand why the Jewish people isolated when we hear some praise Hamas and chant its vicious slogan? Can you blame us for feeling vulnerable, over 80 years after Hitler wiped out half the Jewish population across the world?”
The Senate leader went on to say that he was alarmed by descriptions of Hamas’s actions as part of a “decolonization” movement — arguing that Jews did not colonize present-day Israel and that a large number of Israelis are or descend from the roughly 600,000 Mizrahi Jews “forcibly evicted” from Arab countries following the state’s creation in 1948.
“Jewish Americans were alarmed to see some of our fellow citizens characterize a brutal terrorist attack as justified because of the actions of the Israeli government — a vicious, blood-curdling, premeditated massacre of innocent women, men, children, the elderly,” Schumer said.
“Even worse, in some cases, people even celebrated what happened, describing it as the deserved fate of ‘colonizers’ and calling for ‘glory to the martyrs‘ who carried out these heinous attacks. That happened here in America.
“Many of the people who express these sentiments in America aren’t neo-Nazis or card-carrying Klan members or Islamist extremists. They’re in many cases people that most liberal Jewish Americans felt previously were their ideological fellow travelers. Not long ago, many of us marched together for black and brown lives. We stood against anti-Asian hatred. We protested bigotry against the LGBTQ community. We fought for reproductive justice.”
Schumer said it was important to condemn antisemitism because social sentiments historically have shifted swiftly in other countries.
“Growing up, I remember my grandfather telling me that he rooted for Germany over Russia in World War I because Germans treated the Jewish people so much better than Russia did.
“When the Nazis first marched in the streets and held rallies decrying the so-called ‘international financiers,’ ‘war profiteers,’ ‘Communists,’ many Germans of goodwill either stayed silent or marched alongside of them, not necessarily realizing what they were aiding and abetting,” the senator recounted.
“But when Adolf Hitler took the podium just a few years later at the Reichstag, it was clear by then that the terms ‘international financiers’, ‘war profiteers’, ‘Communists’, represented the Jewish people.”
He added: “Obviously, many of those marching here in the US do not have any evil intent. But when Jewish people hear chants like ‘from the river to the sea’, a founding slogan of Hamas, a terrorist group that is not shy about their goal to eradicate the Jewish people in Israel and around the globe, we are alarmed.
“When we see signs in the crowd that read ‘by any means necessary’ after the most violent attack ever against Israeli civilians, we are appalled at the casual invocation of such savagery. When we see protesters at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade compare the genocide of the Holocaust equivalently to the Israeli army’s action to defeat Hamas in self-defense of their people, we are shocked.
“And when we see many people in news organizations remain neutral about the basic absurdity of these claims and actions, we are deeply disappointed. More than anything, we’re worried — quite naturally, given the twists and turns of history — about where these actions and sentiments could eventually lead.”
Schumer went on to proclaim: “The vitriol against Israel in the wake of October 7, is all too often crossing a line into brazen and widespread antisemitism, the likes of which we haven’t seen for generations in this country — if ever.
“Which is why we need to name it clearly anytime we see it,” he added. “After October 7, when boycotts were organized against Jewish businesses in Philadelphia that have nothing to do with Israel, that is antisemitism. After October 7, when swastikas appeared on Jewish delis on the Upper East Side, that is antisemitism.
“After October 7, when protesters in California shouted at Jewish Americans, ‘Hitler should have smashed you,’ that is antisemitism. After October 7, when a Jewish US senator was violently threatened for her views on Israel, that is antisemitism. After October 7, when students on college campuses across the country who wear a yarmulke or display a Jewish star are harassed, verbally vilified, pushed, even spat upon and punched, that is antisemitism.
“After October 7, when an author and a prominent left-wing magazine labeled the pro-Israeli rally in Washington a ‘hate rally’, that is antisemitism. I attended that rally, like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of others, because I believe there should be a place of refuge for the Jewish people, not because I wish violence on Palestinians or any other people.”
D D Guttenplan, editor of The Nation, rejected Schumer’s accusation of antisemitism, saying: “We’re gratified to see Sen. Schumer is reading The Nation, though he completely misrepresents the point of Dave Zirin’s piece. A closer—or even cursory—reading would make clear that Zirin called out the ‘March for Israel’ for giving a platform to antisemites. We stand by his reporting in its entirety. But as Dave was there, and I was not, I’ll let him speak for himself.”
Zirin, the author of the piece, added, “To me as a Jew, ‘never again’ means never again shall Jews be silent while civilians are massacred. Chuck Schumer clearly has a different definition in mind. I know what I saw at the Stand with Israel rally. I saw Chuck Schumer join hands with far right Chrisitian Zionist [House Speaker] Mike Johnson and share a stage with notorious anti-Jewish bigot Rev. John Hagee. I also saw a rousing ovation for Israeli President Herzog, who has called for a total war on all Palestinians. Schumer either spent that day with his head in the sand or supports these kinds of alliances. My fear is that it’s the latter and calling the rally a march of hate could not have been more appropriate.”
Tlaib’s office did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment on Schumer’s references to the slogan she defended.
The top Senate Democrat’s speech was quickly praised by his Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who hailed it as “extraordinary.”
“I share his disgust at the alarming rise of antisemitism in America,” McConnell said.
Schumer said that he wanted his remarks to appeal specifically to younger people, who polls show are less supportive of Israel, and said that “those who are inclined to examine the world through the lens of repressors versus the oppressed should take note that the many thousands of years of Jewish history are defined by oppression.”