Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:
Senate Majority Leader Schumer often calls himself a “Shomer Israel” – guardian of Israel, and did so again at the outset of his lengthy speech on the Senate floor on March 14, 2024. Following the speech, ZOA received numerous calls from American Jews and pro-Israel Americans expressing their shock at Schumer’s dangerous statements, which attacked Israeli democracy and Israel’s fight for her existence against Hamas and other Palestinian Arab terrorists.
ZOA and the American Jewish and pro-Israel communities are horrified that Schumer is improperly interfering with Israeli democracy by calling for new, premature elections in Israel to try to unseat Israel’s democratically elected prime minister and Knesset, almost three years before the current Israeli government’s four-year term ends. ZOA condemns Schumer for his inappropriate demands of Israel and ZOA urged a retraction of his horrific statement which helped create an atmosphere which helped legitimize not vetoing new anti-Israel UN Resolution demanding a ceasefire. That sort of divisive interference with a foreign government should be unthinkable. Schumer also failed to mention that Israel is now governed by a broad-based war cabinet, and that Israelis are united in the need to destroy Hamas’ terror army and bring the hostages home.
Schumer also overstated Hamas’ inflated Gazan casualties as “immense.” Wharton and other statisticians have shown that the Hamas figures are grossly exaggerated. Schumer also falsely demanded that Israel “must prioritize the protection of civilian casualties when identifying military targets.” No international law requires prioritizing civilians of an enemy in war time.
Further interfering with Israeli democracy, sovereignty and safety, Schumer called for the U.S. and Arab nations to pressure Israel to give up her lawful land to create what would be a Palestinian Iranian-proxy terror state that endangers Israel’s continuing existence (the so-called “two-state solution”). Schumer threatened to cut off U.S. support if Israel did not comply, saying: “the U.S. Government should DEMAND that Israel conduct itself with a future two-state solution in mind. [minute 36:05] We should not be forced into a position of unequivocally supporting the actions of an Israeli government that include bigots who reject the idea of a Palestinian state.”
Thus, according to Schumer, anyone who sensibly rejects creating a Palestinian terror state on Israel’s land is a “bigot.” That means that Schumer is calling 85% of Israelis and a high percentage of Americans “bigots”!
Schumer also ignored the last century of history, and absurdly asserted that the prospect of a state would magically make the Palestinian Arabs peaceful – but that more terror would result if Israel takes real, sensible anti-terror actions, such as tightening Israeli security control. Schumer incredibly stated: “With the prospect of a real two-state solution on the table, and for the first time genuine statehood for the Palestinian people, I believe they will be far more likely to support more mainstream leaders committed to peace.”
The first time??? The Arabs were given extremely generous offers of a state on Israel’s land numerous times throughout the past 75 years (including in 1937, 1947, 2000, 2008 and 2014). Each time, the Arabs rejected a state and instead went to war to destroy Israel or began another Intifada to murder and maim thousands of Israelis.
And that’s not all.
Schumer also overstated Hamas’ inflated Gazan casualties as “immense.” Wharton and other statisticians have shown that the Hamas figures are grossly exaggerated. Schumer also falsely demanded that Israel “must prioritize the protection of civilian casualties when identifying military targets.” No international law requires prioritizing civilians of an enemy in war time.
In fact, Israel carefully follows international law for every operation, which requires weighing the prospective military advantage against the potential expected casualties. Israel often calls off important operations when expected casualties may be too high. Many Israeli soldiers have died as a result of Israel’s care in preserving civilians. Prof. John Spencer of West Point and Britain’s esteemed Col. Richard Kemp this week stated that no army in history has done more to protect enemy civilians than Israel. And these Gazan civilians are not so innocent—they elected Hamas and 72%-85% of them support and praise the October 7th massacre, rape, murder, torture of innocent Jews. Thousands went into the streets of Gaza cheering and handing out candy. Even the nurses and doctors in the Gazan hospitals joined in.
Israel’s protection of civilians is so exemplary that despite Hamas using civilians as human shields, the number and ratio of Gazan civilians killed (approximately one civilian casualty for each of the 13,000 terrorists killed) is the lowest in the history of warfare.
Schumer also outrageously libeled Israel by falsely claiming that “so many Jews” are “horrified” by “our sense that Israel is falling short of upholding these distinctly Jewish values that we hold so dear” of protecting human life. And Schumer even claimed that due to “far-right extremists in his coalition,” Netanyahu is “too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza.” We gasped when we heard that last outrageous libel.
“So many Jews” are actually horrified that Schumer is libeling Israel’s excellent record of preserving and protecting civilians.
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