Posts by Hines Brian

Below, thanks to the Times of Israel, you'll find the complete text of the speech Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gave yesterday, where he describes in an eloquent fashion the contours of the Hamas-Israel war and what stands in the way of achieving lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. 

Schumer said there are four major obstacles:

Hamas, and the Palestinians who support and tolerate their evil ways.
Radical right-wing Israelis in government and society.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Because the speech is a bit over 6,000 words long, I've boldfaced passages that, when read, provide a pretty good overview of his main points. 

This was an important speech, coming from the highest-ranking Jewish political leader in the United States. It carries more weight after President Biden said “He made a good speech." 

Schumer believes all four of the above obstacles to peace need to be removed from power. He also supports a two-state solution in which both Israelis and Palestinians have independent nations. I heartily agree with both aspirations. 

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The following is the full text of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s speech given on March 14, 2024, as released by the senator’s office:

I rise to speak today about what I believe can — and should — be the path forward to secure mutual peace and lasting prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians.

I speak for myself, but I also speak for so many mainstream Jewish Americans — a silent majority — whose nuanced views on the matter have never been well represented in this country’s discussions about the war in Gaza.

My last name is Schumer, which derives from the Hebrew word Shomer, or “guardian.” Of course, my first responsibility is to America and New York. But as the first Jewish Majority Leader of the United States Senate, and the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in America ever, I also feel very keenly my responsibility as Shomer Yisroel — a guardian of the People of Israel.

Throughout Jewish history, there have been many Shomrim, and plenty who were far greater than I claim to be. But nonetheless, this is the position in which I find myself now — at a time of great difficulty for the State of Israel, for the Jewish people, and for non-Jewish friends of Israel.

So I feel an immense obligation to speak and act.

I speak as a member of a community of Jewish Americans that I know very well. They are my family, my friends. Many of them are my constituents, many of them are Democrats and many are deeply concerned about the pursuit of justice, both in New York and around the globe. From the Talmud — Tikkun Olam, the call to “repair the world” — has driven Jews around the globe to do what is right.

We love Israel in our bones. What Israel has meant to my generation, within living memory of the Holocaust, is impossible to measure. The flowering of the Jewish people in the desert from the ashes of the Holocaust, and the fulfillment of the dream of a Jewish homeland — after nearly two thousand years of praying and waiting — represents one of the most heartfelt causes of my life.

And unlike some younger Americans, I remember how hard it was to achieve that dream. I remember clutching my transistor radio to my ear in James Madison High School during the Six Day War wondering if Israel would be pushed into the sea.

If the events of the last few months have made anything clear, it is that Israel is surrounded by vicious enemies, and there are many people around the world who excuse and even support their aims to expel and kill Jews living in their hard-won land of refuge.

I will never underestimate the grave threats Israel faces — and has faced — for the entirety of its existence, nor will I ever underestimate the oppression that the Jewish people have endured for millennia.

It is precisely out of this long-standing connection to, and concern for, the State of Israel and its people that I speak today about what I view are the most pressing existential threats to Israel’s long-term peace and prosperity.

After five months of suffering on both sides of this conflict, our thinking must turn — urgently — to how we can achieve lasting peace, and ensure prosperity and security for both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people in the Middle East.

I believe that to achieve that lasting peace — which we so long for — Israel must make some significant course corrections, which I will outline in this speech.

But first, let’s not forget how we arrived at this critical moment.

What Hamas did on October 7 was brutal beyond imagination. I have sat with the families of those killed in the assault. I have seen the footage and heard the stories of innocents murdered and raped in heartless cruelty. As long as I live, I will never forget these images — this pure and premeditated evil.

Many of my family members were killed by Nazis in the Holocaust. October 7 and the shameless response to support that terrorist attack by some in America and around the globe have awakened the deepest fears of the Jewish people — that our annihilation remains a possibility.

Today, over 130 hostages remain captive in Gaza. I am anguished by the plight of so many hostages still trapped deep inside Hamas’s network of tunnels. I pray for them, and for their families, who have inspired me with their tenacious advocacy to ensure their loved ones are not forgotten.

Many of them are Americans: Jonathan Dekel Chen, Hersch Goldberg Polin; and some are my constituents in New York: Omer Neutra, Keith Siegel and Itay Chen, who we tragically learned this week was brutally killed on October 7 while serving near the Gaza border. Hamas still holds his body, as well as those of Americans Judi Weinstein and Gad Haggai.

I have sat with many of these families and I have wept with them. Each day that their loved ones don’t come home carries enough anguish and grief to last a lifetime.

I am working in every way I can to support the Biden Administration as negotiations continue to free every last one of the hostages. I urge every actor at the table — the Israelis, the Biden Administration, the Qataris, the Egyptians, and anybody else at the table — to continue doing everything possible to get to a deal. Hamas has been given a deal already. They should say yes. There is no time to waste.

My heart also breaks at the loss of so many civilian lives in Gaza. I am anguished that the Israeli war campaign has killed so many innocent Palestinians. I know that my fellow Jewish Americans feel this same anguish when they see the images of dead and starving children and destroyed homes.

Gaza is experiencing a humanitarian catastrophe — entire families wiped out, whole neighborhoods reduced to rubble, mass displacement, children suffering.

We should not let the complexities of this conflict stop us from stating the plain truth: Palestinian civilians do not deserve to suffer for the sins of Hamas, and Israel has a moral obligation to do better. The United States has an obligation to do better.

I believe the United States must provide robust humanitarian aid to Gaza, and pressure the Israelis to let more of it get through to the people who need it.

Jewish people throughout the centuries have empathized with those who are suffering and who are oppressed because we have known so much of that ourselves. As the Torah teaches us, every human life is precious, and every single innocent life lost, whether Israeli or Palestinian, is a tragedy that as Scripture says, “destroys an entire world.”

What horrifies so many Jews especially is our sense that Israel is falling short of upholding these distinctly Jewish values that we hold so dear. We must be better than our enemies, lest we become them.

Israel has a fundamental right to defend itself, but as I have said from the beginning of this war — how it exercises that right matters.

Israel must prioritize the protection of civilian casualties when identifying military targets. I have repeatedly called upon the Israeli government to do so.

But it must also be said that Israel is by no means the only one responsible for the immense civilian toll. To blame only Israel for the deaths of Palestinians is unfair, one-sided and deliberately manipulative — and it ignores Hamas’s role in this conflict.

Hamas has knowingly invited an immense civilian toll during this war. Their goal on October 7 was to provoke a tough response from Israel by killing as many Jews as possible in the most vicious manner possible — by raping women, executing babies, desecrating bodies, brutalizing whole communities.

Since then, Hamas has heartlessly hidden behind their fellow Palestinians by turning hospitals into command centers, and refugee camps into missile-launching sites. It is well documented that Hamas soldiers use innocent Gazans as human shields. The leaders of Hamas, many of whom live lives of luxury in places far away from the poverty and misfortune of Gaza, do not care one iota about the Palestinians for whom they claim to nobly fight.

It bothers me deeply that most media outlets covering this war, and many protesters opposing it, have placed the blame for civilian casualties entirely on Israel. All too often, in the media and at protests, it is never noted that Hamas has gone to great lengths to make themselves inseparable from the civilian population of Gaza by using Palestinians as human shields.

Too many news agencies and newspapers give Hamas a pass by hardly ever discussing this shameful practice that is central to their fighting strategy, and this has led to an inaccurate perception of the harsh realities of this war. I believe stories that justifiably mention the loss of innocent Palestinian life should also note how Hamas uses civilians as human shields. It almost never happens. And I believe that every protest that justifiably decries the loss of innocent Palestinian men, women and children, should also denounce Hamas for their central role in the bloodshed.

When protesters decry the loss of Palestinian life, but never condemn this perfidy or the loss of Israeli lives, it confounds and deeply troubles the vast majority of Jewish and non-Jewish Americans alike who support the State of Israel.

Given that Hamas launched their attack on October 7 to provoke Israel, given that Hamas sought the ensuing civilian toll in Gaza, given that Hamas wanted both Israelis and Arabs to be at each other’s throats… tensions on both sides have dramatically intensified.

And now, as a result of these inflamed tensions in both the Israeli and Palestinian communities, people on all sides of this war are turning away from a two-state solution — including Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in recent weeks has said out loud repeatedly what many have long suspected by outright rejecting the idea of Palestinian statehood and sovereignty.

As the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in our government, and a staunch defender of Israel, I rise today to say unequivocally: This is a grave mistake. For Israel. For Palestinians. For the region and the world.

The only real and sustainable solution to this decades-old conflict is a negotiated two-state solution — a demilitarized Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in equal measures of peace, security, prosperity, dignity and mutual recognition.

Both Jews and Palestinians have long historic claims to this land. Contrary to the unfounded, absurd and offensive claims by some that the Jewish people are “colonizers” in their ancestral homeland, Jewish people have lived in the Holy Land continuously for more than three millennia. For centuries, Jews have made aliyah and gone to the land of Israel to live and settle. For centuries, at Passover, Jews at every corner of the globe have prayed, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

A Jewish homeland in Israel is no twentieth-century contrivance. Israel is our historic home. A home for people oppressed for centuries.

The Palestinians, too, have lived on the land for generations, and in past centuries, they have formed their own distinct culture, identity, cuisine and literature. The idea espoused by some that “There is no such thing as Palestinians” today is inaccurate, offensive and unhelpful.

The only just solution to this predicament is one in which each people can flourish in their own state side-by-side.

But for a two-state solution to work over the long term, it has to include real and meaningful compromises by both sides.

For example, too many Israelis who say they want a two-state solution don’t acknowledge how the amount and extent of expanding settlements render that a virtual impossibility.

And too many Palestinians who say they want a two-state solution don’t acknowledge how their insistence on an unequivocal “right of return” is a fatal impediment to progress.

Both ways of thinking are impeding the peace process.

And there are others on the left who view a two-state solution with skepticism as an ideal that will never happen, a far-off goal that allows for the continuation of the status quo in Gaza and the West Bank, where Palestinians face unique obstacles compared to their Israeli counterparts. As a result, they reject a two-state solution in favor of one state, where Palestinians and Israelis would supposedly live in democratic peace side-by-side.

I can understand the idealism that inspires so many young people in particular to support a one-state solution. Why can’t we all live side-by-side and house-by-house in peace?

I count at least two reasons why this wouldn’t work, and why it is unacceptable to most Jewish people.

First, this combined state could take an extreme turn politically, putting Jewish Israelis in peril. This state would be majority Palestinian, and in the past, some Palestinians have voted to empower groups like Hamas, which seeks to eradicate the Jewish people.

It is longstanding American policy to support democracy overseas, but in this hypothetical single state, democracy could cost Israeli Jews their safety if extremists were to take control of this new state of affairs to ultimately achieve their true aim: the violent expulsion of Jews from the Holy Land.

This is no abstract fear. Thousands of years of Jewish history show that when things go badly, the people of the country in which Jews live — even in a democracy — all too often turn on them as convenient scapegoats. There is no guarantee this wouldn’t happen again in a single Israeli-Palestinian state. To have Palestinian voters be the protectors of Israeli Jews would be a bridge too far to accept.

Second, Jews have a right to their own state. It is troubling to me that many people, especially on the left, seem to acknowledge and even celebrate this right to statehood for every group but the Jews. If a national homeland for all peoples of the world has been the driving goal of the anticolonial movement of the last century, then why are only Jews seemingly penalized for this aspiration? Jews have a human right to their own state just as any other people do, Palestinians included.

As I said, there are also some Israelis who oppose even a two-state solution with a demilitarized Palestinian state because they fear that it might tolerate or be a harbor for further terrorism against a Jewish state.

I understand these fears. But the bitter reality is that a single state controlled by Israel, which they advocate, guarantees certain war forever, and further isolation of the Jewish community in the world to the extent that its future would be jeopardized.

Let me elaborate.

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If Israel were to not only maintain the status quo, but go beyond that and tighten its control over Gaza and the West Bank, as some in the current Netanyahu administration have suggested — in effect creating a de facto single state — then what reasonable expectation can we have that Hamas and their allies will lay down their arms? It would mean constant war.

On top of that, Israel moving closer to a single state entirely under its control would further rupture its relationship with the rest of the world, including the United States. Support for Israel has declined worldwide in the last few months, and this trend will only get worse if the Israeli government continues to follow its current path.

I appreciate that so many Israelis cannot contemplate the possibility of two states right now because they remain so traumatized and angry by what Hamas did on October 7. The brutality, the viciousness, the sexual assault, the imprisonment and abuse of hundreds of hostages. I’m of course sympathetic to this point of view. I’m upset and angry, too.

We will never forget what happened on October 7. But even while we carry the anguish in our hearts, we have to think ahead to the future, the medium and long term, and how we can ensure that something like October 7 never happens again. We cannot let anger or trauma determine our actions and cloud our judgment.

A two-state solution may feel daunting, especially now, but I believe it is the only realistic and sustainable solution — on the basis of security, on the basis of prosperity, on the basis of fundamental human rights and dignity.

But in order to achieve a two-state solution, the reality is that things must change.

Right now, there are four major obstacles standing in the way of two states, and until they are removed from the equation, there will never be peace in Israel and Gaza and the West Bank.

Those four major obstacles are:

Hamas, and the Palestinians who support and tolerate their evil ways.

Radical right-wing Israelis in government and society.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

I will explain each in detail.