Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is in a rush to confirm a huge number of Biden-appointed judges before the Republicans take over in January — but if Democrats want to show they’ve learned the need to put principle above power, they’ll make the time for a floor vote to pass the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act.
Schumer reportedly is eager to beat Mitch McConnel’s majority-leader record for judicial confirmations in a single four-year term, and Dems generally hope to push the nation’s courts as far left as they can before the GOP starts pushing them back.
All a bit selfish and partisan, though normal in politics.
But it hardly makes bottling up the antisemitism bill any less outrageous.
It’s their own fault that the measure still awaits passage.
The House passed it back in May, overwhelmingly: 320-91.
Schumer’s been stalling because his party’s left opposes it and liberals have obsessed all year about not offending anti-Israel voters.
The bill would order the federal Education Department to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism when enforcing federal anti-discrimination laws.
With campuses again hosting all manner of “anti-Zionist” activism, the cause is urgent. Universities need to know they’ve got to stop turning a blind eye to thinly disguised Jew-hate.
Yet Schumer’s reportedly only vowed (in private) to pass it as a rider on some larger, must-pass bill — which greatly weakens the moral signal.
The IHRA definition traces the clear connection between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, a tie that too many Dems have sought to obfuscate ever since Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist butcheries over a year ago.
Those monstrous events drew an outpouring of support around the country — support for their bloody-handed perpetrators and their Iranian masters, that is, accompanied by plenty of outright antisemitism.
And Schumer, though he’s certainly condemned Jew-hate, has struggled to appease the haters — even denouncing Benjamin Netanyahu from the Senate floor as the key obstacle to peace, as if Iran and its proxies would play nice if Israelis chose other leadership.
This self-proclaimed shomer — Hebrew for guardian — of the Jewish people now has a chance to redeem himself.
Show some spine, Chuck, and do the right thing. This bill is morally necessary; its months-long delay is absurd.
Especially after the pogrom in Amsterdam, proving yet again that the Jew-haters themselves draw no such nice distinctions between the Jewish state and Jews more broadly.
And — rarely for a moral necessity — it could be politically invaluable, given numbers suggesting Kamala Harris hemorrhaged Jewish support on Nov. 5.
If Schumer really wants to live up to his often-made pun on his name and be a guardian of the Jews, he needs to bring this bill up for a full floor vote: Passing with overwhelming, bipartisan support, it’ll send a clear message that America is done with institutions that play coy in the face of Jew-hate.
