AIPAC Policy Conference

Schumer: We will forever fight to protect Israel

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Excerpts from Senator Charles Schumer’s address to AIPAC on Monday night:

Many wonder: Why don’t we have peace in the Middle East?…

There are some who argue the settlements are the reason there’s not peace, but we all know what happened in Gaza. Israel voluntarily got rid of the settlements there, the Israeli soldiers dragged the settlers out of Netzarim, and three weeks later the Palestinians threw rockets into Sderot. It’s sure not the settlements that are the blockage to peace.

Some say it’s the borders … but they forget during the negotiations in 2000, Ehud Barak was making huge territorial concessions that most Israelis didn’t like [and] it was Arafat who rejected the settlement. It’s not the borders either.

And it’s certainly not because we’ve moved the embassy to where it should belong in Yerushalayim. It’s not that either.

Now, let me tell you why, my view, we don’t have peace. Because the fact of the matter is that too many Palestinians and too many Arabs do not want any Jewish state in the Middle East. …

Now, the rest of my speech I want to address to you one of the great problems that Israel faces in the future, not immediately, but in the future, but we have to worry about it. …

Too many of our younger generations don’t share the devotion to Israel that our generations have. … Too many of the younger Americans don’t know the history and, as a result, they tend to say both sides are to blame. Many Americans, younger Americans didn’t grow up knowing Israel was attacked time after time. They think Israel has always been strong. They do not realize that if Israel were weak, her enemies would immediately seek her destruction.

I remember being in [James Madison] high school … during the ‘67 War in June ‘67, and I was deathly worried that Israel would just be pushed into the sea by the Arab onslaught. … The younger generation never experienced this. They haven’t lived through a time when Israel’s very existence was balanced on the edge of a knife. …

The world draws a false moral equivalence between Israel’s actions to defend herself and the actions of terrorists who use children as human shields in their evil campaign to push Israel into the sea. The unfairness springs from a deep well of bias that has always existed, unfortunately, against Eretz Yisrael. If only the younger generation knew more about this unfairness, I believe it would affect them powerfully. And there are two things we can do immediately that will help rectify this situation.

First, we must pass and highlight the Taylor Force Act, which will bring an end to American dollars that directly benefit a Palestinian Authority until it ceases making payments to the families of terrorists. … While Israel justifiably defends its borders, the PA celebrates and compensates terrorists as martyrs.

Second, we must continue to stand firm against the profoundly biased campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel through boycotts divestment and sanctions. While Iran publicly executes its citizens, Turkey jails its journalists, scores of Arab nations punish homosexuality with imprisonment and torture, why does BDS single Israel out alone for condemnation? … 

There’s only one word for it — anti-Semitism. Let us call out the BDS movement for what it is. Let us delegitimize the delegitimizers by letting the world know when there is a double-standard; whether they know it or not, they are actively participating in an anti-Semitic movement.

And finally, my friends, we must highlight the danger that Israel faces from a newly-resurgent Iran now so active in Syria. … Last summer Congress, Democrats and Republicans together, granted the administration new authority to counter Iran’s malign activity. Now it must use it not only to combat Iran, but to push Russia to repel Iranian proxies in Syria. We can never be complacent about any threat near Israel’s borders and Iran is a threat right now. …

As a boy, I grew up hearing stories about my great-grandmother in the town of Chortkiv, in Galicia. In 1941, the Nazis invaded her part of Galicia. They told my great-grandmother to gather her whole family on the front porch of their house, from elderly people to little babies. There were more than 17 of them. They said you all have to leave. My grandmother said no. And the Nazis brutally machine-gunned down every single one of them.

Now, my great-grandmother … could never imagine that one day there would be a country for Jews. The idea seemed like an absurdity in that world. Jews had been scattered to the winds, foreigners in their own country, derided by their neighbors, forbidden to farm or become academics or tradesmen. We were scapegoats, we were second-class citizens throughout our history. …

Imagine if you could tell the Russian Jew, chased from town to town by angry mobs and burning torches, that one day he’d have a state where he could seek refuge and live like anybody else. Imagine if you could whisper to the Polish Jew, who they came for one day and loaded on a train, separated from his family, forced to labor day after day and watch those wreaths of smoke rising under a silent blue sky, imagine if you could tell him one night that someday soon there would be an Eretz Yisrael, that after two millennia of wandering the desert, the Jewish people would return home where we could live in freedom and raise families in peace. If only we could tell them.

My friends, we must never forget what Israel and its freedom mean to the Jewish people and what the friendship of the United States means to securing that freedom. As long as Hashem breathes air into my lungs, I will not forget, I know you will not forget, and together we will forever fight to protect the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel.

Am Yisrael Chai! Am Yisrael Chai!