WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sen. Charles Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism.
Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader in the Senate and currently the highest-ranking Jewish lawmaker, added his remarks on anti-Zionism to a speech he was giving on health care. At the end of that speech, he said he wanted to thank French President Emmanuel Macron for making the same argument in a speech over the weekend.
“Anti-Semitism is a word that has been used throughout history when Jewish people are judged and measured by one standard and the rest by another,” Schumer said.
“When everyone else was allowed to farm and Jews could not; when anyone else could live in Moscow and Jews could not; when others could become academics or tradesmen and Jews could not,” he said. “The word to describe all of these acts is anti-Semitism. So it is with anti-Zionism; the idea that all other peoples can seek and defend their right to self-determination but Jews cannot; that other nations have a right to exist, but the Jewish state of Israel does not.”
Schumer said a recent manifestation of anti-Jewish bias was the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel.
“The global BDS movement is a deeply biased campaign that I would say, in similar words to Mr. Macron, is a ‘reinvented form of anti-Semitism’ because it seeks to impose boycotts on Israel and not on any other nation,” Schumer said.
