Democratic Senate Minority Leader blasts far-left accusations of genocide in the Gaza Strip, says he has ‘no faith’ in the United Nations, calling the organization ‘antisemitic.’
By David Rosenberg, World Israel News
Senator Chuck Schumer, the elder Democratic senator from New York and Minority Leader of the U.S. Senate, accused the United Nations of an ‘antisemitic’ bias against the State of Israel.
The 74-year-old lawmaker spoke with The New York Times in an interview published Sunday, two days before the release of his new book, Antisemitism in America: A Warning.
During the interview, Schumer defended criticism of the State of Israel and its handling of the war in the Gaza Strip following the Hamas invasion of October 7th, but drew a line with accusations of genocide.
“That’s antisemitism,” Schumer said. “And a lot of the slogans that people use either are or slide into antisemitism. The one that bothers me the most is genocide.”
Genocide is described as a country or some group tries to wipe out a whole race of people, a whole nationality of people. So if Israel was not provoked and just invaded Gaza and shot at random Palestinians, Gazans, that would be genocide.”
“That’s not what happened. In fact, the opposite happened. And Hamas is much closer to genocidal than Israel.”
Lamenting the causalities in the Gaza war, Schumer recalled that he urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take steps to minimize collateral damage and to maximize the flow of aid into the Gaza Strip.
Nevertheless, Schumer emphasized that Hamas bears the onus for the war and resulting casualties, citing the group’s use of human shields.
“They put rockets in hospitals. They put their military supplies in schools. What is a country supposed to do when rockets are being fired from a school? So Israel’s been in a much more difficult position because of what Hamas did.”
Responding to accusations against Israel of genocide in the United Nations, Schumer described the international organization as being anti-Israel to the point of antisemitism.
“The U.N. has been anti-Israel, antisemitically against Israel,” Schumer argued.
The Senate Minority Leader also referenced the 1975 measure, General Assembly Resolution 3379, by the United Nations condemning Zionism as racism.
“To say that the Jewish people should not have a state when every other people should have a state is antisemitism, the old double standard.”