Don’t look to Chuck Schumer for lessons on fighting hate

Because American politics has long ago slid into the realm of the delightfully absurd, let us play a fun little game. Suppose you were the leader of the Democratic Party, a distinction you flaunted every time a microphone was anywhere in your general vicinity. Suppose you were the most senior Jewish politician in American history, a meaningless honorific you yourself had carefully cultivated for more than a decade. And suppose you had just published a book about antisemitism, despite having a slim record when it comes to leveraging your storied seniority and fighting for the welfare of real, live Jews. How would you promote your book?

It hardly takes a seasoned Beltway insider to answer this question. You go out there, hold as many events as your schedule permits, and pray to HaShem that some misguided gaggle of kaffiyeh-clad Hamas enthusiasts picket your reading.

Should that happen, you stand as tall as your arthritic knees would allow, and, like a geriatric Samson, declare that you’re not afraid of the Philistines and their jeers and that such virulent public displays of hate are precisely why you wrote a book titled Antisemitism in America and gave it the non-too-ambiguous subtitle A Warning. All that is easy, simple, and patently obvious. So, obviously, Charles Ellis Schumer did exactly the opposite.

The Democrat, who is, for the time being, still the Senate minority leader, announced last week that he was suspending all promotional events for his book, citing “security concerns”.

In case you’re confused by such complex verbiage, here’s a simplified version of the account: a Jewish Senator who wrote a book to inspire Jews to be more brave while facing antisemitism in America just cancelled his book tour because he’s very afraid of antisemitism in America.

That, at least, would’ve been a comical but somewhat touching turn of events. We all want our lawmakers to be Churchillian, yet most of us empathise when fear, loathing, and other human frailties keep them from making the most inspired and inspiring decisions.

But Schumer being Schumer, the real reason behind his cancelling his own book tour is even sillier. As numerous news accounts have since made clear, it wasn’t the antisemites Chuck Schumer feared would storm his readings, but his fellow Democrats.

Earlier this month, Schumer voted to advance the Republican budget, which, he argued, was better than a government shutdown. In saner times, such a responsible choice would generate a few “atta boys” and two or three tepid taps on the back. But this is the era of hyperpolarisation.

So naturally, any opportunity to dress up like Joan of Arc in a drab suit and futilely resist is one some in his party just couldn’t miss, and instead of mild applause Schumer found many of his colleagues threatening not only to crash his book talks but to eject him from his role as leader.

“Security concerns,” then, weren’t precisely the mots justes; “Job security concerns” would’ve hit closer to the mark. Still, only an unfeeling prude could follow l’affaire Schumer and not feel a soft spot for the senator. Here, after all, is a Jewish bigwig who, according to reports, did everything he possibly could not to bring the Antisemitism Awareness Act to a vote.

That’s despite the fact that 14 other members of his party, including New York’s other senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, co-sponsored the bipartisan bill designed to direct the Department of Education to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism when investigating anti-Jewish bias on campus.

And here is a Jewish Democrat who, according to Columbia University’s former president, Minouche Shafik, advised that nothing should be done to counter the violent Hamasniks on campus because only Republicans cared about such trifles.

Schumer denied Shafik’s report, but, at some point, inaction speaks louder than words.

The senator who stood by and watched the single greatest surge of antisemitism in America, then wrote a book entitled Antisemitism in America, then cancelled his own book tour not because of Jew-hatred but because of his own party’s dislike of one very specific Jew, himself – that senator deserves our begrudging respect. To paraphrase a man who actually did something to fight antisemites, never was so little owed by so many to one man who had been in office for so, so long.

There’s no more befitting way, then, to celebrate the senator’s latest contribution to the world of letters than doing precisely what Charles Schumer had done for decades to make sure American Jews are safe, respected, and represented – absolutely nothing at all.

Liel Leibovitz is editor-at-large for Tablet and Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute