by Jonathan S. Tobin
The Democrats’ Senate leader may have had no choice but to endorse El-Sayed following his primary victory. Business as usual has normalized Jew-hatred.
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| Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) enters the Public
Citizen’s Combating Corruption forum at the National Press Club in
Washington, D.C., on July 30, 2026, where he called for stronger
anti-corruption measures in the U.S. government by proposing a new
independent Anti-Corruption Bureau. Photo by Finn Gomez/Getty Images. |
Members of the Jewish community, as well as Democrats and Republicans
of all backgrounds with a moral compass, have been expecting too much
of Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Decent people who oppose the
normalization of Jew-hatred may have hoped that the Senate Minority
Leader would have moved heaven and earth to stop Dr. Abdul El-Sayed from
winning his party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate in Michigan. And
once El-Sayed narrowly won that primary this week, principled political
observers might have hoped that Schumer would have refused to endorse a
man whose campaign centered on an effort to stigmatize and drive American Jews out of the public square in the general election.
A victory for antisemitism
Adding
another left-wing populist allied to the Democratic Socialist faction
who seeks to revive destructive ideologies of the past is one thing. So,
too, is the accession to a position of influence of yet another
politician who has been steeped in the toxic leftist ideas of the
present, such as critical race theory, intersectionality and
settler-colonialism, all to exacerbate racial divisions. Several already
represent the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Once you
officially accept that the progressive extremists that comprise “The
Squad” in that legislative body are legitimate colleagues, the start of a
Senate version isn’t much of an innovation.
But El-Sayed is more than just another leftist.
At
a time when there is an unprecedented surge of antisemitism around the
globe and in the United States, the notion of simply shrugging off the
possibility of someone who rationalizes terror against Jews and seeks to
demonize the State of Israel and its people (who make up half of the
world’s Jewish population) ought to be unacceptable for any decent
person. For a person with Islamist beliefs of his own, El-Sayed has the
chutzpah to seek to redefine Judaism so as to eliminate a key element of
faith and Jewish peoplehood—the love of and devotion to the land of
Israel, and the obligation to support its Jewish citizens. That alone
would be reason enough to oppose him.
With respect to Schumer, that was never going to happen.
There
are two reasons for this. One is simply a matter of the nation’s
political organizational chart. Schumer, for better or worse, is the
Senate Minority Leader. The responsibilities that go with that position
make it impossible for him to stand aside from the battle for the open
Michigan seat that Democrats desperately need to take back control of
the Senate.
The other reason is personal. It would have been
entirely out of character for a man whose entire adult life has been
singularly devoted to partisan politics, rather than principled advocacy
or good governance, to suddenly grow a conscience and say he will have
nothing to do with El-Sayed.
A life of partisanship
After
all, politics is Schumer’s life. He has literally never had any other
job, having won a seat in New York’s State Assembly right after
graduating from Harvard Law School in 1974. He won election to the House
in 1980, where he served for 18 years before winning a Senate seat. He
spent his first 18 years in the Senate (1999-2017) working assiduously
to climb to the top of his party’s Senate caucus and the last decade
busily defending that position. And he knows he will have a battle on
his hands to retain it next January, whether or not the Democrats gain a
majority.
Over the course of his 52 years in elective politics,
he has employed every piece of partisan artifice and skill
imaginable—not to mention every dirty trick in the book—to get ahead. As
such, there was simply no way for him to say that El-Sayed’s open
antisemitism was a bridge too far and that he would oppose his election.
It didn’t matter that the 41-year-old political hopeful has pronounced
claims to defend Jewish safety, which are as disingenuous as the ones
touted by another Islamist, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Doing
so would not only have made it impossible for him to retain his
leadership position when the 120th Congress convenes next year and
organizes itself. The drift to the left among congressional Democrats is
painfully obvious to a person who is as single-minded as Schumer about
obtaining every advantage on Capitol Hill, as opposed to pursuing
ideological goals. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that a Senate
Democratic caucus, whose membership voted
40-7 in April of this year to block arms sales to Israel, might have
ousted him sooner than that, had he openly opposed El-Sayed.
Sen.
Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), another relentless foe of Israel, is already
making noises about deposing Schumer as leader. And New York’s
progressive activists and Democratic Socialists, who elected Mamdani
nine months ago, are already chomping at the bit to unseat him when his
term is up in 2028. “Squad” ringleader and fellow New Yorker Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a possible challenger, if she doesn’t run
for president that year.
Once you grasp these facts, his decision is easy to understand.
The
same is true for New York’s junior senator, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.
She is the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC).
And it’s her job to elect Democrats.
It’s true that Schumer privately
opposed El-Sayed during the primary. But fearing the anger of his
party’s base—not to mention Senate colleagues like Sens. Elizabeth
Warren (D-Mass.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who warned him to stay out
of the race—he confined his efforts to private conversations with
donors.
Much like his “private” opposition to former President
Barack Obama’s disastrous Iran nuclear deal in 2015, Schumer wouldn’t
stick his neck out even on a matter of life and death like that. He may
have spent his career boasting to Jewish audiences that he was the shomer, or “guardian,” of the State of Israel in Congress.
But
that was never true—or at least not when it might have required some
courage or a willingness to pay a political price for defending Jewish
security in the Middle East or the United States. In 2024, Schumer did
it again with a speech
attacking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to give cover to
his party’s leaders, former President Joe Biden and Vice President
Kamala Harris, for their retreat from a position of support to a Jewish
state fighting for its life.
Gillibrand and Schumer see their task
as being concerned about picking people who can win elections and help
them obtain power, not to judge their moral character. That’s why they
were prepared to stand by Graham Platner—the Nazi-tattooed,
Israel-bashing Maine oysterman—after he won the Maine primary earlier
this year until allegations of sexual misconduct finally ended his run
for the Senate.
As Schumer said in an interview with Punchbowl News this week when explaining his decision on El-Sayed: “The issue isn’t me. It’s about winning.”
A
Democratic majority and the ability to thwart, if not impeach,
President Donald Trump is the only thing that matters to Democrats. And
that is the agenda that Schumer will follow.
A new ‘Profiles in Courage?’
Nobody expects Schumer to write a new chapter in President John F. Kennedy’s book Profiles in Courage
about courageous senators who paid a heavy political price for voting
as their conscience, rather than their party, dictated. But this is no
ordinary moment in American politics.
At no previous time in American history has antisemitism been such a potent factor in public discourse.
Since
the Hamas-led Palestinian-Arab terror attacks in southern Israel on
Oct. 7, 2023, the volume of Jew-hatred in the American academy, media,
culture, the arts, politics and online chatter has grown to a level
unknown in living memory. The demonization of Israel and the Jewish
people by toxic leftist ideologies that falsely labeled them as “white”
oppressors didn’t just lead to all those demonstrations on campuses and
city streets, where mobs openly called for Jewish genocide (“From the
river to the sea”) and terrorism against Jews everywhere (“Globalize the
intifada”).
It has created an atmosphere where blood libels
against the Jewish victims of an intended genocide were accused of
implementing genocide against the Palestinians became normalized in
newspapers like The New York Times and in political debates. Liberal Democrats who wouldn’t bend their knees to the new Jew-hatred have been ousted from their seats in the House. And now, Jews have good reason to fear that the incitement against them from people in power like Mamdani is putting them in imminent danger of physical violence.
At
such a moment, business and politics as usual of the sort that Schumer
has practiced during a half-century of his grubby and grasping efforts
to win political prizes is simply insufficient to the challenge of the
moment.
The ‘shomer’ that wasn’t
Perhaps Schumer
never thought that he’d be required to behave in a manner that would
conform to his Jewish stump speech about being a shomer. His own
life story exemplified the classic 20th-century American Jewish success
story, in which a member of the community rose to great heights while
not having to shed his Jewish identity. Had he left politics a decade
ago when he finally achieved his ambition to be the Democrats’ Senate
leader, he would have been able to escape that charge. But it was the
75-year-old’s fate to last long enough to be in a position of great
influence when his fellow Jews were in danger.
We have already seen how uninterested he has been in defending Jewish security. That was amply demonstrated
when Americans learned in 2024 that he had advised the Board of
Trustees of New York’s Columbia University that “only Republicans” were
concerned about their toleration and encouragement of antisemitism on
their Morningside Heights campus after Oct. 7. He may have dared
to write a book about antisemitism that was published in 2025 as part
of his ongoing efforts to pose as a defender of the Jews. But by the
time it came out, revelations about his communications with Columbia, as
well as the atmosphere of Jew-hatred simmering within his own party,
forced him to cancel his book tour.
Characteristically, that
humiliation left him undaunted. Indeed, Schumer may well imagine that he
can go on indefinitely as one of the nation’s most powerful men without
being held accountable for being as bereft of principles as he is of
shame.
A moral test
Yet the El-Sayed candidacy isn’t
just another embarrassment for the country’s most prominent liberal Jew.
Along with every other element of the current surge of vile bigotry
that is changing the face of American politics in ways we are only
beginning to understand, it is the kind of moral test that comes along
once every generation or two.
It’s a moment when lifelong
legislators are required to step up and respond to the challenges of
history. And we know that most Democrats, including almost all of those
who seek their party’s presidential nomination in 2028, are siding with
the antisemites like El-Sayed—or staying silent.
Republicans have
done better, but if they allow someone like Vice President JD Vance to
succeed Trump, then they, too, will fail.
Fair or unfair, public
figures are judged not so much on the sum of their lifework but on how
they respond to those singular moments in time, whether it is the debate
about slavery and the Civil War in the 19th century or the rise of the
totalitarians in the 20th. We don’t know what will happen in the coming
years, but it is becoming apparent that the explosive growth of
antisemitism will, in one way or another, create yet another pivotal
chapter in history. Many people will likely emerge from this struggle
with their reputations either destroyed or enhanced.
At such a
time, it is a pity that rather than a person of courage and character,
American Jews are stuck with the likes of the feckless Schumer to
represent them.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS, a columnist for Newsweek and a
contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political
scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East
diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice”
podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily”
program, available on all major audio platforms and on YouTube.
Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief
political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger.
He has won 60-plus awards for his columns, commentary, art criticism
and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on
politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history
at Columbia University.
Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/column/jonathan-s-tobin/a-man-of-courage-was-needed-instead-american-jews-have-schumer
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