Chuck Schumer: Palestinians are the reason there is no peace in the Middle East

[dead0man]

Am I the only one reading this a different way?

To me he's saying that the Jews believe there is a historical, religious justification for their ownership of the land while Palestinians come from a different tradition and dont believe what the Jews believe....so thats why theres conflict.

yes, the actual words say that, but that's probably not what he was saying and that's certainly not how it's being read.


I was expecting him to be more direct when I read the thread title.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I should have been more clear - The PA routinely denies Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, which is to deny the Jews their historic homeland.

No they don't. Not for the past 25 years. Read the Oslo Accords.

"We will never recognize the Jewishness of the State of Israel" - Mahmoud Abbas - November 2014.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-palestinians-will-never-recognize-israel-as-jewish-state/

That's not denying Israel's right to exist. That's standing up for the rights of Israeli Arabs and Druze (1.5 million) not to be considered foreigners in their own country.

You wouldn't support the United States being declared a white state, would you?

I wouldn't be surprised if at minimum he supported the U.S. being declared a Christian state.

[TPIG]

I should have been more clear - The PA routinely denies Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, which is to deny the Jews their historic homeland.

No they don't. Not for the past 25 years. Read the Oslo Accords.

"We will never recognize the Jewishness of the State of Israel" - Mahmoud Abbas - November 2014.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-palestinians-will-never-recognize-israel-as-jewish-state/

That's not denying Israel's right to exist. That's standing up for the rights of Israeli Arabs and Druze (1.5 million) not to be considered foreigners in their own country.

You wouldn't support the United States being declared a white state, would you?

I wouldn't be surprised if at minimum he supported the U.S. being declared a Christian state.

In terms of Israel, the state itself was set up specifically to be a refuge for the Jewish people after the horrors of the Holocaust. Israel has always been the historic homeland of Jews, and to deny its essential Jewishness is to deny the very purpose of its existence.

This is not comparable to the United States which has purposefully served as a refuge of people of all nationalities, religions, and creeds for hundreds of years. The melting pot is part of America's nature, while not necessarily being the case with Israel. That is not to say that Israel doesn't embrace pluralism and freedom (it does), but rather to say that while certain political ideas (liberty, justice, equality) are the foundational grounds of the US, Israel was founded specifically on religious grounds, thus making Judaism and the state itself inseparable.

[The Mikado]

Really, the fact that the debate here is Democrats going "bad Schumer" and Republicans going "Yay, Schumer" is just more evidence that, over the long term, Israel has lost the debate in the US. Once the present generation of leadership passes, Israel is going to more and more be a partisan issue rather than one of bipartisan consensus.

The blame for this lies pretty squarely with Bibi Netanyahu trying to be an openly partisan cheerleader for one American party and acting like a disrespectful jackass to our previous President. Netanyahu has been making it clear for years that he has zero interest in the support of American liberals.

[Santander]

God bless Chuck Schumer and the nation of Israel.

[ProgressiveCanadian]

God bless Chuck Schumer and the nation of Israel.

Go ahead atlas Democrats , side with Santander and the other right-wingers on this. Please show your true colors.

[Sestak]

God bless Chuck Schumer and the nation of Israel.

Go ahead atlas Democrats , side with Santander and the other right-wingers on this. Please show your true colors.

Far left logic:

Schumer is being slightly critical of Palestine? Sacrilege!

Linda Sarsour comes out in support of a known anti-Semite? Progressive Hero!

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

He’s not wrong.

[ProgressiveCanadian]

God bless Chuck Schumer and the nation of Israel.

Go ahead atlas Democrats , side with Santander and the other right-wingers on this. Please show your true colors.

Far left logic:

Schumer is being slightly critical of Palestine? Sacrilege!

Linda Sarsour comes out in support of a known anti-Semite? Progressive Hero!

Middle east peace is "Far Left"...Mmkay.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

God bless Chuck Schumer and the nation of Israel.

Go ahead atlas Democrats , side with Santander and the other right-wingers on this. Please show your true colors.

Far left logic:

Schumer is being slightly critical of Palestine? Sacrilege!

Linda Sarsour comes out in support of a known anti-Semite? Progressive Hero!

Middle east peace is "Far Left"...Mmkay.

J Street is for peace and say that they are similar to Kadima, which isn't remotely far left. AIPAC is only for crazy right-wing Likud. I wonder what my junior senator said in her secret speech there. I guess I don't get to find out.

[Strudelcutie4427]

Suddenly I like Schumer a bit

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

More reasons why Democrats need to replace Schumer.

I have been saying that Schumer is unqualified to be Democratic Senate leader since the middle of 2016, and everything he does continues to prove that he is unqualified.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

The truth: Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud cohorts are the reason there is no peace in the Middle East.

[NewYorkExpress]

Schumer's mostly right. Non-American (and European) Muslims are the reason there is no peace in the Middle East, not just Palestinians, not that we (or Israel) should be attacking everyone else in the Middle East.

[ProgressiveCanadian]

Schumer's mostly right. Non-American (and European) Muslims are the reason there is no peace in the Middle East, not just Palestinians, not that we (or Israel) should be attacking everyone else in the Middle East.

This is so misguided...

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Sen. Schumer is simply acknowledging the fact that Jews have a deep historical tie, thousands of years old, to the land of Israel.

WOW, Jews live to be thousands of years old?!? Why haven't I heard this before?!

[America Needs R'hllor]

Chuck pls. You can be a zionist without religious BS, we don't need the damned Torah to justify ourselves. This just undermines the argument of Zionism, which originated in a secular Jewish movement, and makes ot illegitimate in the eyes of... Well, any normal person who doesn't think ancient books should dictate our daily lives. He would've done better to say that the reason there's no peace is the Palestinian refusal to acknowledge the right of the Jewish people for an independent country, their deep historical roots in this country, their hard and thankless work in developing it properly and basically their right to live in safety.

The truth: Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud cohorts are the reason there is no peace in the Middle East.

Lmao dude, learn some basic history. Benjamin Netanyahu hasn't been in power for our entire existence here, you know.

[Joey1996]

Am I the only one reading this a different way?

To me he's saying that the Jews believe there is a historical, religious justification for their ownership of the land while Palestinians come from a different tradition and dont believe what the Jews believe....so thats why theres conflict.

There is a video attached to the tweet, watch it.

[Joey1996]

Again there is a video attached to this tweet which I guess you have to click the tweet to see. Far worse than the one-off quote.

Here's a transcript of what he said in the clip: https://twitter.com/_Saeen_/status/971277911201378304?s=19

[Joey1996]

Schumer's position that Palestinians don't believe a Jewish state should exist nullifies his stance on a two-state solution and places all of the blame in the conflict on Palestinians. He sounds like a right-wing extremist.

[The Mikado]

Schumer's also exceptionally old, which explains a lot of his position. There's a gradual, but real, generational shift on this topic.

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

You're wrong, Chuck.

[HisGrace]

Sen. Schumer is simply acknowledging the fact that Jews have a deep historical tie, thousands of years old, to the land of Israel. The Palestinian Authority routinely denies Israel's right to exist, and thus don't allow for any serious peace agreement to be reached. I don't defend Chuck Schumer on many things, but he is not wrong in this case.

No they don't.

I should have been more clear - The PA routinely denies Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, which is to deny the Jews their historic homeland.

No they don't. Not for the past 25 years. Read the Oslo Accords.

"We will never recognize the Jewishness of the State of Israel" - Mahmoud Abbas - November 2014.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-palestinians-will-never-recognize-israel-as-jewish-state/

Dude...it's like Trump...he doesn't actually mean what he says

Not a valid excuse for Trump or in this case.

[HisGrace]

Sen. Schumer is simply acknowledging the fact that Jews have a deep historical tie, thousands of years old, to the land of Israel. The Palestinian Authority routinely denies Israel's right to exist, and thus don't allow for any serious peace agreement to be reached. I don't defend Chuck Schumer on many things, but he is not wrong in this case.

No they don't.

I should have been more clear - The PA routinely denies Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, which is to deny the Jews their historic homeland.

No they don't. Not for the past 25 years. Read the Oslo Accords.

"We will never recognize the Jewishness of the State of Israel" - Mahmoud Abbas - November 2014.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-palestinians-will-never-recognize-israel-as-jewish-state/

That's not denying Israel's right to exist. That's standing up for the rights of Israeli Arabs and Druze (1.5 million) not to be considered foreigners in their own country.

You wouldn't support the United States being declared a white state, would you?

That's not the same thing. The United States has never been an ethnic state at any point in it's history. From the get-go you had Anglo-Saxons, Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians, French, and various other ethnicities here. There's no such thing as being "ethnically American" unless you count Native Americans. Despite what alt-righters might say, "white" isn't an ethnicity either.

Israel being an ethnic state is no different than Japan, China, or the multitude of Arab states near Israel in the Middle East. Nearly every country on Earth is an ethnic state (aside from post-colonial states and a few countries where unique circumstances resulted in big demographic shifts). There's no reason just Israel should be singled out for this. Given that Jews had faced extreme persecution everywhere they went, culminating in the Holocaust, a Jewish state was something that needed to happen after WWII.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

First off, I would never want to blithely dismiss the holocaust, which I understand to be the greatest tragedy in history and a shameful stain on European civilisation. But with that said, an injustice in the past can in no way justify a injustice (even a lesser one) today.

Israel is not and can never be an ethnic state like Japan because 20-25% of Israel's population is non-Jewish. This is a fact of geography and history. The logic of your argument that Israel should become a Jewish state leads inevitably to either 1) ethnic cleansing to purify Israel, or 2) permanently making non-Jews (not just Arabs, also Druze etc.) second-class citizens in their own land (even if their people have lived there since prehistory). If you say that Israel should seek to emulate the ethnic character of Japan, with its long history of racism, discrimination and outright murderous pogroms against Koreans living in Japan...well, I don't understand how a Jew who knows his peoples' history could in good conscience allow that to happen.