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.
