Schumer Feels ‘Special Obligation to Keep the Democratic Party Pro-Israel’

By Reuvain Borchardt

BROOKLYN — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said “Israel should stay a bi-partisan issue,” and that neither progressives in his own party should succeed in their anti-Israel agenda, nor should Republicans portray Democrats as abandoning Israel.

“As the leader of the Democratic Party, I have a special obligation to keep the Democratic Party pro-Israel,” Schumer said Sunday at a breakfast hosted by the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition at the offices of OHEL. “And I don’t care who’s in the head of the Israeli government,” a reference to Likud leader Binyomin Netanyahu’s electoral victory, and questions about whether a conservative Israeli government will clash with the Democratic administration in Washington.

Schumer proudly noted that all “the 50 Democrats I’m in charge of voted for Iron Dome.”

But Schumer also bemoaned that some Republicans are seeking to make Israel a partisan matter by arguing that Republicans are pro-Israel while Democrats are not.

Schumer said that he “wrote the law in 1994” that, when eventually implemented by the Trump administration in 2018, moved the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

But at the ceremony at the opening of the embassy in Jerusalem, Schumer said Sunday, “Guess who wasn’t invited? The highest-ranking Jew in the Senate, one of the authors of the legislation. And when Ted Cruz [and] Lindsey Graham, who’s my friend, went to the embassy, the first thing they say is the Democrats have deserted Israel.

“You cannot make this a political issue, folks. And my job is to keep it a bipartisan issue. Sometimes it’s not easy, but I have so far succeeded and I will continue to succeed, because I love Eretz Yisrael.”

Acknowledging that the assembled Orthodox Jewish community typically shares political ideology with Republicans, the Democratic Leader said, “I know people have different political affiliations here, but Israel should stay a bi-partisan issue.”

Schumer, who met last week with the FJCC executive board at the home of chairman Josh Mehlman, was endorsed by the FJCC at Sunday event, in his bid for a fifth Senate term.

FJCC Chairman Josh Mehlman, referencing the many forms of assistance Schumer attained for the Jewish community, said that if Schumer were defeated, a freshman senator replacing him “would take 20, 30 years to get the clout that Sen. Schumer as majority leader has.”

Though Schumer is expected to easily defeat his Republican challenger, Joe Pinion, the majority leader, invoking a healthy dose of Yiddish and Hebrew expressions, said it was personally important to him to get win the Brooklyn Jewish vote as well.

“I’m in very good shape politically. I’m ahead by 20 points, 25 points in the polls. I have support everywhere, because I help everybody,” he said. “But it matters to me in my heart, in my neshama that I carry the Flatbush [vote]. To be honest with you, I’m not worried about Boro Park or Williamsburg, the Rebbe tells them what to do … [But] This is a more yeshivishe community, and people make up their own mind, and I know there’s a lot of division, Democrat-Republican. But when I first ran against [incumbent Sen. Alfonse] D’Amato in 1998, the frum community supported D’Amato. And people came to me and said, ‘[it’s] hakaras hatov.’ And I said, ‘I understand that, but if I help you, I want hakaras hatov to be on my doorstep, too.’ And it has been ever since. But it matters to me personally — his is the place where I’m from, this is the place that I’ve helped — that I carry it.”

“The baalebatim know what I’ve done, but the rank and file, they don’t know. So I would hope that everyone here would let the people in their institution and everybody else know what I have done and know it’s important to vote for me.”

Though the Orthodox community is politically conservative, it frequently endorses incumbent Democrats — who rarely face serious challengers — with whom it has good working relationships.

The FJCC, like most other Orthodox organizations, is endorsing all other incumbent Democrats in the area — including Attorney General Letitia James, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, Assemblymembers Helene Weinstein and Steve Cymbrowitz — with the exception of Gov. Kathy Hochul. Most endorsers in the community, including the FJCC, are endorsing Republican challenger Lee Zeldin for governor, primarily due to Zeldin’s opposition to recently passed state regulations on private school curriculum, and Hochul’s neutrality on the issue.

Weinstein spoke Sunday in support of yeshiva, saying, “People read these cockamamie stories in The New York Times and they think that’s the world of yeshiva,” a reference to a Times article published in September alleging that Chassidish yeshivas provide an insufficient secular education that leaves its graduates ill-prepared for life. She argued that it is important for the orthodox community to vote moderate Democrats to office, “because if we’re not there, there is no block to some of the sort of crazy ideas” from the progressive wing of her party.

FJCC co-chair Chaskel Bennett agreed, saying, “I have made it my mission to try to educate voters that [it is important] for this community, living in the heart of blue Brooklyn, to be able to have relationships on both sides of the aisle … If we are not going to be bipartisan on certain issues with certain people, we’re going to box ourselves out. The progressives are challenging the moderates. The progressives are winning in many areas. If we allow the progressives to win, we’re in trouble.”

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rborchardt@hamodia.com