Chuck Schumer Against The World

Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal, which later became a worldwide hit movie,

by Jack Engelhard

Of Abraham it’s said that in smashing idols and embracing the absolute sovereignty of a single G-d, he became one man standing against the rest of the world. Well maybe it’s not quite that lonely and heroic for Chuck Schumer, but pretty close. To a Democrat like Schumer,Barack Obama is “the rest of the world.”

That took guts doing what he did. Last week Schumer put to rest all doubt. He will vote to defeat Obama’s Iran Nuke Deal.

So doing he risks the displeasure of the President and the Party. He also risks losing his bid to become Party leader in the Senate.

Toughest of all, perhaps, Schumer risks being called out for voting Jewish

Yes, Schumer is known for his warmth for the Jewish State. But Schumer is a United States Senator. He declared himself against the deal because the deal is harmful to the United States. He spoke up for his New York constituents and he is acting in accord with his American conscience.

This is a rotten deal. It is against the best interests of the United States and it must go down. That is Schumer’s thinking and that is Schumer at his best.

Last week, Obama spent an hour trying to put lipstick on this pig. 

The President resorted to a crafty age-old trick, blaming Israel – you know, the Jews, wink, wink – in case the deal fell, and he singled out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for being so stubborn.

Bibi is guilty of “unprecedented interference” in US politics, according to Obama with Fareed Zakaria on CNN. As if an Israeli leader speaking his mind is somehow out of turn. 

This is the same Obama who dispatched an army of political fixers to interfere Bibi from getting reelected.

Obama was sending a message. 

The message was meant for Bibi and the warning was meant for Schumer. Behave or else.

Hours later, Schumer went public. He refused to be intimidated. The timing itself – that really took guts.

Schumer became an instant hero to those who disdain the Iraq deal, and rightly so, but some people wanted more. Why did Chuck say that he was only acting on his own behalf? Why did he say that he would not, repeat not rally his fellow Democrats to his side?

Well, what more can we possibly want? Schumer still has to live in the real world. He still has to caucus with members of his own Party.

He still has to do lunch with the President – the leader of his Party, the leader of his country. Too much lobbying would be rubbing it in.

Schumer has done plenty as it is. He should not be made to answer for what he is not doing.

We know where the Liberals stand. Running on TV at the moment is a J Street commercial frantically supporting the deal.

Swallow it, they say. It’s good for you. Take the medicine.

Why is it so good? Because Obama says so, that’s why.

Plus, John Kerry and his team put it together and is there a smarter man on the face of the earth than John Kerry?

To this observer, there is no need to talk centrifuges or “snap-back” clauses or secret agreements to know that Kerry was taken to the cleaners.

The proof of it is that Kerry left Tehran leaving four hostages behind. If he could not get that much business done, surely he was swindled on everything else.

But the Left insists that we won. They tell the rest of us that we have no right to object because we do not have all the facts.

This is true. We do not know all the details. Precisely why we are suspicious and why we find it impossible to talk to a Liberal.

They truly say this… They argue that nobody knows what’s in the deal… but it’s a good deal.

Stop scratching your head. Go, make sense of that logic…plus this logic from Obama himself, saying that they “don’t really mean it” when they chant “Death to the United States” and “Death to Israel.” Six million Jews had to die in order to prove that Hitler really did mean it.

How many chances are we supposed to give the ayatollahs to likewise prove that they mean what they keep saying?

New York-based author and bestselling novelist Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. Website: www.jackengelhard.com

I was wrong about Schumer, and it feels so good

by Michael Goodwin

Never has being wrong felt so good, nor has a mistake been so worth celebrating.

Chuck Schumer surprised me in all the best ways. His opposition to the terrible Iran nuke deal is breathtakingly bold and opens the door to actually defeating it. That would be one of the best things to happen to America, Israel and the civilized world in a very long time.

Let us count the ways Schumer’s decision matters.

First, because he is the next Senate Democratic leader, I expected him to follow a president from his party and the majority of his caucus. He may pay a price for breaking out of the political box, but he gives cover to other Dems to do the same.

Second, his timing. Schumer ­announced his decision only a day after Obama made an impassioned, partisan appeal. Any momentum Obama had was stopped by Schumer, who effectively rebuked the president’s shameless attempt to link Republicans to Iranian hardliners. That rancid argument is now dead.

Third, the substance. Schumer issued a detailed statement demolishing supporters’ basic argument — that the deal, while imperfect, was better than no deal. Schumer persuasively showed the deal served Iran more than our side.

He broke his decision into three parts — the nuclear issues during the first 10 years of the deal, the nuclear issues in the following decade and the “non-nuclear” aspects, meaning Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism. For each, he asked whether we would be better off with or without the negotiated terms.

His conclusions were striking. We might be better off with the deal in the first decade, he argues, but almost certainly we would be better off without it in the other two parts.

He found numerous weaknesses in the text, including over inspections and sanctions. After the first decade, he wrote that Iran “can be very close to achieving” a nuke, and that the quest “will be codified in an agreement signed by the United States.”

He was just getting warmed up. The turning point, he said, was the non-nuclear issues, meaning Iran’s lethal ability to use unfrozen accounts of $50 billion to fund its terrorist programs. That added up to “a strong case that we are better off without an agreement than with one.”

His conclusions, which include doubts that Iran will move away from its apocalyptic theocracy, should resolve suspicions that Schumer might still side with an Obama veto. Absent a miraculous change in Iranian behavior, the senator has made the strongest possible case against the deal, so I don’t think he’ll flip-flop.

A fourth and final significance of Schumer’s position is that it makes New York the clear leader of the opposition movement. Five brave Democratic House members from the state — Eliot Engel, Steve Israel, Grace Meng, Nita Lowey and Kathleen Rice — also said no to Obama. The entire GOP delegation will do the same.

That should not be the end of it. National security is a local issue, as 9/11 painfully proved.

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani has joined the “no” chorus, and his successor, Michael Bloomberg, should, too. Former top cop Ray Kelly should sign on, as should business and civic leaders who understand the stakes.

Most important, Gov. Cuomo should lead them. Often willing to buck his party’s left-wing orthodoxy, including on school choice, the Iran deal should be the next example.

With the Empire State remaining the perennial first choice among jihadists, New York’s governor has an absolute duty to do everything he can to protect its residents, businesses and visitors from attack.

Schumer’s conclusion alone that Iran would use the end of sanctions to expand its export of terrorism is reason enough for the governor to join the opposition.

He would seem to be halfway there. Cuomo traveled to Israel to show solidarity with the Jewish state during last year’s Gaza war. When he returned, he said, “Any New Yorker who doesn’t understand that Israel’s fight is our fight is living not in the state of New York but in the state of denial.”

Now he can prove he meant what he said.

Schumer .... Where are you?

Sen. Chuck Schumer is famous for his ability to locate the nearest TV camera and plant himself squarely in front of the lens.

And yet, as about 8,000 rallied in Manhattan Wednesday night on an issue near and dear to Schumer’s heart — Israel’s security — the senator was a no-show.

The rally was in opposition to the Iranian nuclear deal. Schumer was absent because he hasn’t yet decided whether to do the right thing and oppose President Obama’s disastrous deal, or do the opposite of the right thing and shepherd it through Congress.

Israel’s supporters in the United States have many reasons to hope the deal goes down in Congress.

Yet one goes unmentioned: Schumer’s role in securing passage of the Iran deal represents what would be the capstone in Obama’s quest to distance the United States from Israel.

To understand why, some brief background is in order.

In July 2009, about a month after making his famous “address to the Muslim world” in Cairo, Obama hosted national Jewish leaders at the White House.

Malcolm Hoenlein, head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, offered the president a word of advice. “If you want Israel to take risks, then its leaders must know that the United States is right next to them,” Hoenlein said.

Obama disagreed, saying that during the George W. Bush years “there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states.”

This statement neatly demonstrated the two major weaknesses in Obama’s view of the Middle East.

The first is historical ignorance: Far from Israel sitting on the sidelines, when Bush stood steadfastly by Israel, the Jewish state — then led by rightist Prime Minister Ariel Sharon — evacuated every last Jew and soldier from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.

Second, Obama was signaling clearly his intent to put “daylight” between the two countries.

But the president can only create so much of that daylight himself.

In reality, the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel is so strong precisely because it goes far deeper than the whims of the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Both the US military and Congress have close working relationships with their Israeli counterparts.

This is deeply frustrating for Obama, so he set out to weaken those pillars of the US-Israel relationship.

How would Obama weaken military ties? Here’s what he did.

During last summer’s war in Gaza, Israeli defense officials wanted to replenish munitions from stocks of American weapons stored in Israel for just such an occasion. The Pentagon didn’t need presidential approval to green-light the transfer, which it did.

Obama, however, objected when he found out about it. He withheld additional weapons transfers to Israel and forced the Pentagon to route such requests through the White House. Obama had essentially downgraded the US-military alliance during wartime.

But Congress is a coequal branch, and thus harder for Obama to control. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t tried, of course.

The most recent example was when House Speaker John Boehner invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress without coordinating it with the White House. Obama cast congressional attendance at the speech as a betrayal.

But nothing Obama has done to damage Israel’s standing in Congress could compare to getting Chuck Schumer — the supposed shomer (guardian, in Hebrew) of Israel — to ensure the survival of a nuclear deal that rearranges America’s Mideast alliances by elevating Tehran at the expense of the Israelis, the Saudis, the Jordanians and the Egyptians, among others.

And that’s why crowds in Times Square Wednesday night chanted “Where is Chuck Schumer?”

As Schumer continues to avoid answering questions about his stance on the nuke deal, his constituents are wondering how far he’s willing to go to become the Democrats’ next Senate leader.

Would Schumer the shomer throw America’s allies under the bus and allow Obama to drive a wedge between Washington and Jerusalem? If Schumer won’t answer that question directly, his handling of the Iran deal will.

Call Schumer to Publicly Oppose and Fight Iran Deal: Hikend

Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) called on Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York) to publicly oppose the Iran deal and to commit to leading the fight to stop it in Congress. 

“We’ve listened to Senator Schumer for years and how he takes every opportunity to explain the origin of his name Schumer and what it means for him to be a proud “Shomer”—which in Hebrew means protector. From your time as Congressman to one of the most powerful members of the Senate, Senator Schumer, you have repeatedly called yourself our ‘shomer’ (protector). Now is the time to live up to your claim and put your words into action. We need you to demonstrate leadership on one of most critical foreign policy issues of our time. Be our protector and stop this terrible deal,” said Hikind.

Hikind added, “Senator Schumer says he will “do the right thing.” These are unprecedented times and it’s time to stop this deal, which is disastrous for America and our allies in the Middle East. This will define your legacy. Please do not allow partisan politics or any other considerations to cloud your judgment."

“I call upon all New Yorkers to contact Senator Schumer’s office – call him at 202-224-6542, Tweet him @SenSchumer, e-mail him, let him know how you feel. Senator Schumer is a powerful voice in Congress and he needs to hear from you. Now is not the time to be silent.”

Contact Information for Senator Charles E. Schumer
New York:
Phone: 212-486-4430
Fax: 202-228-2838

Washington, D.C.:
Phone: 202-224-6542
Fax: 202-228-3027

Web: http://www.schumer.senate.gov/contact/email-chuck
Twitter: @SenSchumer