Yes, Israel Is Now a Partisan Issue

"To make Israel a partisan issue only hurts Israel and the US-Israeli relationship," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had the temerity to say only days after demanding the Jewish state's duly elected government be toppled.

Schumer was responding to Donald Trump's hyperbolic contention that Jews who vote for Democrats "hate Israel" and their religion. And to be fair, Trump isn't exactly right.

Some progressive Jews hate Israel -- for all the reasons socialists hate the United States. Others hate their faith, which is why they're constantly creating bogus denominations of Judaism based more on leftist rites than any Jewish culture or theology. Other Jews, sadly, are far too comfortable wallowing in generational victimhood to support a strong Jewish state. Many others simply don't care.

Schumer, though, doesn't hate his religion. He's a devout practitioner. Israel is being offered up as a sacrifice to the partisan gods. And, as the Democratic Party moves further to the left, and progressivism becomes the ideological hinge on which all issues turn, it will become increasingly antagonistic toward the Jewish state.

Even nominally pro-Israel Democrats have now adopted a vile bothsidesism meant to placate the pro-Hamas Left. When Schumer demanded Israel dissipate its elected government on the floor of the Senate, he also made morally reprehensible comparisons between right-wing "extremists" in Israel and the Palestinians who sexually torture, murder and kidnap women and children.

In functional terms, Schumer is on the side of the Hamas boosters in Dearborn and Islamist regimes. So pardon me if I'm not overly offended by Trump's statement.

Trump bypassed the intractable Palestinians to forge wider agreements between Israel and Sunni Arab nations. President Joe Biden immediately returned the United States to the Obama-era policy of coddling the Islamic theocracy in Iran, opening vast resources for them to plow into proxy wars across the Middle East.

Trump stripped funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which Israelis warned for years was bolstering Hamas attacks. One of the first things Biden did was restore that cash flow. We now know that U.N. workers not only materially assisted Hamas but participated in the sexual torture, murder and kidnapping of women and children on Oct. 7.

Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, putting an end to the fantasy that the capital city would be shared with the Palestine Liberation Organization or Hamas or any other entity. Biden and Democrats began pushing for a "two-state" solution only days after a Palestinian government launched its gruesome, medieval attack on Jews.

If you're more offended by Trump's hyperbole than you are by the Biden administration hiring a Hamas-boosting Rob Malley to "negotiate" with the Jew-haters in Iran, maybe you're not pro-Israel. Democrats are more inclined to whine about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's milquetoast press releases than they are to bring up the fact that Iranian assets are working in the Pentagon.

The only party clamoring to save Hamas right now is the Democratic Party. Biden claims he continues to "affirm that Israel has a right to go after Hamas" but also wants a ceasefire. Those positions are in direct conflict, as the president accidentally admitted in an interview last week. Hamas, Biden told MSNBC, wanted a ceasefire to "survive" and "rebuild." A ceasefire now, when Israel is at the cusp of eliminating the terror group, is a pro-Hamas position.

Obviously, there is antisemitism on the right and left. But only progressives put on widespread virulent antisemitic protests these days. Only elected Democrats are spreading blood libels and accusing Jews of dual loyalty. Only elected Democrats and liberal cable news networks are repeating Hamas propaganda as fact. And right now, only Democrats are pushing Israel to create a three-front terror state on its borders.

Like Barack Obama, Biden has been far tougher on Benjamin Netanyahu than he ever was on Iranian mullahs -- repeating Hamas' concocted causality numbers last week to feed the phony "genocide" narrative, when Israel has done more to protect civilians during urban war than perhaps any other nation.

Unlike Obama, Biden is not driven by ideological motivations. He's just a weak, feckless man devoid of any real principles. Privately, for instance, Biden allegedly told Netanyahu that he is not trying to oust him. Which, if true, means he is only doing so publicly to placate his pro-terror wing.

How is this not a partisan issue?

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David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books -- the most recent, "Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent." His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on Twitter @davidharsanyi.