Chuck Schumer, senior Senator from New York announced that he is opposing the
Administration’s nuclear deal with Iran.
…Some of us support the deal, because—like a majority of American Jews—we support the president, and we sympathize with his aims of ending Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons while keeping America out of another Middle Eastern war. Some of us oppose the deal because we believe that it falls very short of the criteria for meaningful limits on and inspections of Iran’s nuclear research programs that the Administration itself repeatedly promised to America and the world. Some of us are less concerned with the specifics of the deal than with the prospect of an American alliance with the theocratic Iranian regime, which the deal appears to be designed to cement.
As heated as the arguments between us can get, we can all agree that all
of these positions, and their many variants, are entirely within the bounds of
legitimate political debate…
What we increasingly can’t stomach—and feel obliged to speak out about
right now—is the use of Jew-baiting and other blatant and retrograde forms of
racial and ethnic prejudice as tools to sell a political deal, or to smear
those who oppose it. Accusing Senator Schumer of loyalty to a foreign
government is bigotry, pure and simple. Accusing Senators and Congressmen whose
misgivings about the Iran deal are shared by a majority of the U.S. electorate
of being agents of a foreign power, or of selling their votes to shadowy lobbyists, or of acting contrary to the best interests of the United States, is the
kind of naked appeal to bigotry and prejudice that would be familiar in the
politics of the pre-Civil Rights Era South.
This use of anti-Jewish incitement as a political tool is a sickening
new development in American political discourse, and we have heard too much of
it lately—some coming, ominously, from our own White House and its
representatives. Let’s not mince words: Murmuring about “money” and “lobbying”
and “foreign interests” who seek to drag America into war is a direct attempt
to play the dual-loyalty card. It’s the kind of dark, nasty stuff we
might expect to hear at a white power rally, not from the President of the
United States—and it’s gotten so blatant that even many of us who are generally
sympathetic to the administration, and even this deal, have been shaken by
it.
We do not accept the idea that Senator Schumer or anyone else is a fair
target for racist incitement, anymore than we accept the idea that the basic
norms of political discourse in this country do not apply to Jews. Whatever one
feels about the merits of the Iran deal, sales techniques that call into
question the patriotism of American Jews are examples of bigotry—no matter who
does it. On this question, we should all stand in defense of Senator Schumer.
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