Chuck Schumer – HolyLandJustice.org

Ivanka Trump gestures as she stands next to the dedication plaque at the US embassy in Jerusalem, May 14, 2018. (photo: Ronen Zvulun / Reuters)

The policy of our government may be unstated, but it is crystal clear: The United States will no longer seek peace.

By Paul Waldman | The Washington Post | May 14, 2018

Whether you agree or not, under President Trump, the United States is not pretending anything. We have declared unambiguously that we care only about Israel’s interests — or, to be more accurate, Israel’s interests as understood by the conservative Likud party — and that we no longer have any concern for Palestinian rights, Palestinian lives or the eventual creation of a Palestinian state.

Monday marked the moment when the policy of the United States government toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lost all complexity, all ambiguity and all nuance.

On Monday, we were confronted with two sets of pictures. On one side, thousands of Palestinians gathering at the Gaza border to protest are being shot down by Israeli snipers. As I write, at least 43 people have been killed and more than 2,000 wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry; those numbers will undoubtedly rise.

On the other side, representatives of the Trump administration, including Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, some Republican donors and a couple of evangelical megachurch pastors who have said vile, bigoted things about Islam and Muslims, are celebrating the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.

Here’s how President Trump marked the occasion:

Big day for Israel. Congratulations!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2018

Continue reading “Under Trump, the US has abandoned the last shred of balance on Israel”

gettyimages-927739606-15204433131 — Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaking at the AIPAC Strategy Conference in Washington, DC. (photo: Getty Images)

Young Americans, including young American Jews, are more critical of Israel than their elders. But it’s not because they’re ignorant of history — it’s because they’re less enthralled by myth.

By Peter Beinhart | Forward | Mar 7, 2018

The real problem confronting Schumer isn’t that young Americans are ignorant. It’s that more and more of them are knowledgeable enough to realize that Israeli policy in both the West Bank and Gaza massively violates Palestinian human rights. And to wonder why a Democrat like Chuck Schumer is supporting policies so antithetical to the progressive principles he claims to hold dear.

Chuck Schumer is worried about young people. In his speech on Monday at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference, he warned that “too many of the younger Americans don’t know the history” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “and as a result they tend to say, well, both sides are to blame.” And so — after a joke about a Mrs. Goldfarb who is sentenced to one night in jail for each of the four peaches she stole, and whose husband yells to the judge, “She stole a can of peas, too” (relevance: unclear) — the Senate Minority leader offered a history lesson to America’s youth.

He began with the settlements. “There are some who argue, the settlements are the reason there’s not peace,” Schumer declared. “But we all know what happened in Gaza. Israel voluntarily got rid of the settlements there. The soldiers, Israeli soldiers dragged the settlers out of Netzarim and three weeks later the Palestinians threw rockets into Sderot. It’s sure not the settlements that are the blockage to peace.” Take that Israel-queasy millennials.

The implication of Schumer’s tale is that because Palestinians kept fighting Israel even after Israel withdrew its settlements from Gaza, Palestinians don’t really care about settlements. Their real beef is with Israel’s very existence.

But there are problems with this logic. Continue reading “Chuck Schumer needs a history lesson on Israel — and on a changing America”