On May 14 hundreds of Jewish New Yorkers protested in front of Senator Chuck Schumer’s house (D-NY) demanding an end to ethnic cleansing in Palestine. The Senate Majority Leader is a longtime supporter of Israel.
The demonstration was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace – NYC. After a number of activists made speeches at Grand Army Plaza the group marched to Schumer’s home, where Rabbi Miriam Grossman led a mourner’s kaddish for all the Palestinians who have been killed.
“As an American, my taxes fund Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank, siege of Gaza, and dispossession of Palestinians in East Jerusalem neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah. We’re here to tell Senator Schumer to invest in our communities in New York, not apartheid in Palestine,” said JVP-NYC member Talia Baurer.
Schumer has been surprisingly quiet over the last two weeks considering he usually publicly defends Israel during periods of escalated violence. After New York protestors demonstrated outside the Israeli consulate during the 2014 Gaza War, he said their anger was directed at the wrong side. “They should be protesting Hamas because it’s Hamas that is the cause here,” he declared. “It’s Hamas that cynically uses Palestinian civilians, putting rockets in their homes and in their hospitals, sending rockets across the border to Israel.”
Schumer’s absence has caused some consternation among the pro-Israel crowd. An editorial at the Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva World News attacked the Senator for his “inexplicable silence” and worried that it was creating a vacuum for progressive lawmakers to criticize the country:
A perfect storm of opposition to Israel is forming.
YWN has been receiving an inordinate amount of messages from Jews everywhere with the same damning question, where is Chuck Schumer? The senior Senator from New York has been silent and many have noticed it. Worse yet, AOC & company have noticed it too and are clearly taking full advantage.
Senator Schumer if you can’t find your voice now, what good is having the highest ranked Jewish official in history in this position?
This weekend thousands of New Yorkers filled the streets in solidarity with Palestine.
This is wonderful. These Jewish folk are brave, and that young lady is great. Nothing like seeing Jewish Americans making a strong stand against Israel’s crimes. I hope those who keep falling over their swords for Israel (in congress) are intelligent enough to get the message. This time the criticism for Israel’s violence is louder, stronger, and wider. The younger Jewish Americans are able to have access to the truth, and it seems they are finding it. Great.
Good luck to all who stand up for human rights and freedom.
‘Israel does more to help against terrorism than any other place.’
The existence and conduct of Israel, and US support for Israel, is a cause of a good deal of the terrorism in the Middle East.
Schumer!!! If I were in NY I’d be there too. At last Jews are criticizing Israel, and if Jews do it, everybody can. And soon it won’t be political suicide. I hope!!!
I’m not at all surprised that Chucky and Pelosi are hiding in silence. They’ve found themselves on the wrong side of history and with no one to publicly back them that they are willing to associate themselves with. Everyone openly defending Israel and her grotesque actions are in either the wrong camp or persona non grata. Fox News, Benjamin Netanyahu, AIPAC, Trump, McCarthy, Israel’s Ambassador to the US, and millions of radical Christian insurrections. They might just be learning that being a PEP is no longer sustainable or tolerated. Or at the very least they are in full damage control and choosing silence over outrage in a desperate attempt to cling on to all those high-rolling pro-Israel Jewish donors.
I must say that I’m impressed that when push came to shove AOC has turned up very publicly on the side of Palestine. I’ll be the first to say that I was wrong in previous comments about her playing in carefully, but she’s clearly seen a gap in the market and found herself with some solid backing. Schumer should definitely be watching a for a primary challenge in his future.
We will soon see the rebirth of that much used term ,”self hating Jews”.God love them , I do.
I could never get the meaning of that term except that is was a cudgel used by zionist apologists when they were out of answers to difficult questions posed to them.
The good news is, it seems the number of self hating Jews in on the rise and the number of self loving Jews is heading in the opposite direction.I wonder how many of the apologists will jump ship when the s–t hits the fan and it will .Not if but when.
The mondo-nuts and mayhems and catalans will have to find a new cause .Better not quote their work experience at MW as part of their CV for obvious reasons.Maybe the criminals running Myanmar might pay them a stipend to tell tall tales on their behalf.
There is certainly a new feel to the international reaction to this latest set of war crimes being committed by the rogue apartheid illegitimate entity known as israel.