Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D – NY) recently delivered a powerful speech on the Senate floor condemning antisemitism and invoking “fellow travelers” in a historical and poignant way. As we end the week, I want to highlight key portions of his speech and address the issue of free speech, which has a direct impact on travel.
Powerful “Fellow Travelers” Speech By Chuck Schumer
You can read Schumer’s speech here, delivered on November 29, 2023, or watch the video below. Let’s key in to what I found to be the most important part of the speech:
While the dead bodies of Jewish Israelis were still warm, while hundreds of Jewish Israelis were being carried as hostages back to Hamas tunnels under Gaza, Jewish Americans were alarmed to see some of our fellow citizens characterize a brutal terrorist attack as justified because of the actions of the Israeli government.
A vicious, bloodcurdling, premeditated massacre of innocent men, women, children, the elderly – justified!
Even worse, in some cases, people even celebrated what happened, describing it as the deserved fate of quote “colonizers” and calling for quote “glory to the martyrs” who carried out these heinous attacks.
Many of the people who have expressed these sentiments in America aren’t neo-Nazis, or card-carrying Klan members, or Islamist extremists. They are in many cases people that most liberal Jewish Americans felt previously were their ideological fellow travelers.
Not long ago, many of us marched together for Black and Brown lives, we stood against anti-Asian hatred, we protested bigotry against the LGBTQ community, we fought for reproductive justice out of the recognition that injustice against one oppressed group is injustice against all.
But apparently, in the eyes of some, that principle does not extend to the Jewish people.
Powerful words.
The phrase “fellow travelers” was quite deliberate, with Marxist roots tracing back to the communist era. Per Britannica:
The term fellow traveler was widely used in the Cold War era of the 1950s, especially in the United States, as a political label to refer to any person who, while not thought to be an actual “card-carrying” member of the Communist Party, was in sympathy with its aims and supported its doctrines.
Since the October 7th attacks on Israeli, the antisemitism dog whistles have been blown by the ideological left in an alarming way (the far right has always blown this whistle). And such conduct repugnant.
People I otherwise respect have foisted the most insidious propaganda attempting to paint Israel in the worst possible light and implicitly justify the acts of Hamas by denying the right of Israel to defend its citizens from further harm.
Some have argued that Hamas is wrongfully condemned for justifiably “breaking out of prison” in the Gaza Strip, but that is the height of cognitive dissonance. Do prisoners escaping from prison have a right to slaughter civilians in retribution for their sense of injustice? Is that self-defense?
War is messy. I do not use the term “collateral damage” because it is too dehumanizing, but I weep for every dead Palestinian because of what Hamas has done, which was the condition precedent for any Israeli action within the Gaza Strip. If Hamas did not launch its October 7th attack against Israel, 17,000 Palestinian men, women, and children would be alive today.
Even today, missiles continue to launch from the Gaza Strip into Israel. If prisoners have the right to fight by any means necessary for their survival and freedom, as some have argued, so does the power which was first attacked. And if it is a war to the death, I will support the side that does not kill its own citizens for disavowing the faith or being gay.
Free Speech…And Travel
I support free speech rights on college campuses and everywhere else, as I do on this blog in the comments section. In that sense, I sympathize with how three universities presidents delicately danced around the issue of antisemitism this week in a Capitol Hill hearing.
Frankly, I think those ignorant pigs at elite college universities calling for the destruction of Israel or justifying the violence of Hamas are guilty of the worst type of bigotry and hatred.
But I’m not for silencing them. Let the world see what bigots they are. I answer their speech with speech of my own, showing the world how evil they are and how unfit they are for positions of trust, including jobs. But silencing speech we do not like is not my cup of tea.
The ignorance that argues “from the river to the sea” is “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction or hate” is the same ignorance that fuels imbeciles to yell out, “Hitler should’ve finished the job!” to pro-israeli protests in Florida.
I condemn the disingenuous double-talk of those who seek to equivocate on the use of such terminology, as if they are unaware of Hamas’ own use of the term.
As Schumer lamented, “Some of the most extreme rhetoric against Israel has emboldened antisemites who are attacking Jewish people simply because they are Jewish, independent of anything having to do with Israel.”
I am not a shill for Israel. News is emerging that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was specifically warned about the attacks and chose to ignore the warnings. If it is revealed that the attack was allowed to occur to justify a ground invasion into the Gaza Strip to extend Israeli borders, I will join in the condemnation of that government (and call for the PM and his cabinet to be charged with murder). For years I have condemned West Bank settlements and view them as a key hindrance to peace.
But Israel did not make Hamas slaughter Israeli civilians. To argue that it was a justified response to “colonialism” or an “open air prison” is to give license to the most brutal acts of hated in human history. And here I don’t mean the attacks of October 7th, but the historic violence perpetrated against Jewish people going back centuries on the basis that “they deserved it.”
As travelers we can see that first hand. In the Concentration Camps of Germany and Poland. In the Warsaw Ghetto. In Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Free speech is the vehicle of exposing and overcoming injustice around the world. Travelers who tell their stories raise awareness and promote change. The answer to speech is more speech. The truth will ultimately prevail.
CONCLUSION
I look forward to the final ceasefire and hope that Israel will work closely with its Arab neighbors to avoid a power vacuum in the rubble of Gaza or permanent occupation. I still hope for a two-state solution in which Israelis and Palestinians…and Jews and Muslims…can live side-by-side. That may seem like an impossible dream, but that must be our aim. I hope to travel to the Gaza Strip one day and break bread in a land that has been turned upside down.
But kudos to Schumer for such a thoughtful and powerful speech. His lament over the conduct of his “fellow travelers” is an important reminder that history has a way of repeating itself and while I do defend the right of free speech, the thin line between anti-Israel and antisemitism has been crossed far too often lately. Words have consequences.
Matthew writes “War is messy. I do not use the term “collateral damage” because it is too dehumanizing, but I weep for every dead Palestinian because of what Hamas has done, ”
This is blaming someone else. Palestinians are dead because of the very aggressive methods of Israel. The IDF is very aggressive. The US Army is not like that.
Basically, everyone in that region has an explosive temper. They only want their way. Israel denies Palestine the right to exist. Hamas doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist. Just a bunch of hotheads.
The US Army is not like this? Really?!
Do you realize it would have been nearly impossible for Allied Forces to wage WWII today? (i.e. Dresden)
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/apocalypse-dresden-february-1945
And how about Iraq, where ~300K Iraqi civilians were killed after the American invasion?
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/iraqi
This js exactly why Vladimir Putin needs to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize. Just look at the extremely miniscule number of non-combatant deaths in tbe 2 year war in Ukraine.. Clearly the Russian precision strikes are more precise with little to no collateral damage.. Btw the Dresden comparison is no longer valid. Gaza has been bombed worse than Dresden and equivalent of two Hiroshima’s now.
By what metric? Certainly not casualties…
Dresden was not the USAAF at its greatest.
If the U.S. bombed the entire neighborhood of any of the armed rebels in Iraq, there would have been 6M dead, not 0.3M. America is great. Israel is not. Yes, they are the victims but they are also very aggressive.
A lot of the current rules when it comes to regulating war and humanitarian matters are a product of WW2 and only got legal power years after the Axis powers had been defeated and been occupied by us and allies.
I can say that there are people in the senior ranks of the US military — some of whom I most certainly know not to be antisemitic — who privately communicated from early on that Israel seemed to have been in overkill mode and that those in the Israeli political and military chain of command may want to think about where and how they travel abroad because of prosecution concerns down the road. Even the IDF’s choice of the sort of retrofitted bombs that have been used by the IDF tell a sort of story about how anger and a desire for quick “shock and awe” can combine to be a problem. And this is even more problematic in a densely populated area.
About Dresden, my understanding is that the population density of Dresden at the time of its being bombed most heavily was never akin to Gaza and that Dresden women and kids weren’t all locked in like the women and kids in Gaza.
Israel is 100% responsible for all the atrocities because they are an occupationist force. Would you call a home owner defending his home from a burglary a perpetrator, of course not. Israel instigates all this evil because they have terrorized Palestinians since 1948. There are no civilians in Israel. Nearly all serve in the military or have served in the military. Nearly all support the actions of the Israeli occupation forces.
All that they know comes from Israel controlled media that owns and controls American media companies. The Presidents of all networks except fox are Jewish. They ignore the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed and maimed by Israel but pretend that 300 mostly soldiers antagonizing Gaza which is an open aid prison are the only thing that matters.
There is a lot to disagree with in what you posted here, but I’ll focus on one this time:
Proportionality matters. For example, just because some unarmed kid breaks into your house through an unlocked door doesn’t give you the right to torture and kill the kid after you’ve got the trespassing kid detained. Also, war crimes and other violations of law can be committed by occupied peoples too, and a pursuit for national sovereignty by the occupied doesn’t provide an allowance for committing war crimes.
How many rockets, stabbings, car bombs, bombing of theaters, etc. Would satisfy your so called “proportionality?”
And about the “Genocide? ”
Gaza has tripled it’s population since granted autonomy.
Gazans cheered mutilated, raped and tortured the hostages and bodies during October 7h, and those brought back.
Gaza is the quintessential aimed encampment controlled by a splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization whom has existed since the early 20th century. It’s charter calls for the killing of all Jews.
Are you also referring to Palestinian attacks on Israelis before Netanyahu repeatedly asked the Qataris to resume material funding of Hamas to continue to do him a favor? Seems so.
Unlike Netanyahu, I’ve always been opposed to Hamas being given any support and its being allowed to run the Gaza open air prison set up by the Israeli government prison wardens.
Destroying over 50% of homes and bombing like the IDF this year in a densely populated open air prison is not the way to effectively eliminate both Hamas and its future generation of fellow travelers there and elsewhere. Or do you believe you can genocide your way into forever eliminating anti-Israel terrorism or whatever the target of elimination happens to be?
Ref Iraq – I was one of many soldiers there. The Americans (of any of the services) did not kill all those people; read your own article – much of it was from Iraqi security forces and sectarian violence. As for Dresden, that was the Air Force, not the Army. Perhaps if you served your country in the military (are you an American?), you’d have a better understanding of the services….
Ref Israel before October 7 and America: why has it always been the policy of US politicians to express support (without conditions) for Israel and whatever it wants? Why all the tax money all these years to Israel? Are we to assume the majority of Americans support this policy? I’ve never understood that. It’s almost like saying you can’t be a true American w/o supporting Israel.
Is this a travel blog or just your sounding board?
A few things.
First, the United States Army Air Forces was part of the US Army until 1947.
I served in the USAF from 2004 to 2007.
Thank you.
Second, you failed to read or listen to Schumer’s speech…or my own story. There is no “unconditional” support for Israel. Try again.
Finally, this is *my* travel blog and I write about stories that interest me, whether they be political or not.
Most of the Iraqis killed by weapons during the GWBush years were indeed not killed by US weapons in the hands of US military and contractor personnel. The Iraqis were doing most of such killing of other Iraqis once we got into 2004 and thereafter.
Well written, Matthew. Thanks for using logic and reason to attempt to address what is a very challenging situation. We all deserve a voice, but more often than not, many voices don’t take the time to attempt to understand before sharing a knee-jerk response.
They always do what they accuse others of. Why should we be listening to a group that’s 3% of the population but controls all industries, has disproportionate ownership and wealth, and says anything that is critical of them is antisemitism. It’s antisemitic to tell the truth. It’s antisemitic to not support globalists and globalism. It’s antisemitic to ask why we should flagellate ourselves for people who call us goys and compare us to animals. When there is one group you can’t criticize, that’s the group who deserves all the criticism.
The 3% are behind everything from lgbt propaganda to open borders for the West but of course not for Israel or their own communities. They push interracial mixing for everyone else but not themselves. They are the literal inventors of communism with Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky but we have to pretend they are innocent. Nope.
Behold John Dogas…America’s next shooter armed with an AR15 and Internet based nonsense.
What comes out of my dog’s ass is a lot more wholesome than what comes out of John Dogas’s mouth.
Elon Musk, is that you?
Either way, your sins can be downplayed and washed away if you go do your penance with a visit to Netanyahu. Elon Musk style.
Thank you for a thorough and thoughtful outline. I happen to generally agree with you. Israel is certainly not immune to perhaps nongenuine actions, or allowing things out of convenience to further a political agenda and I believe there will be fall-out and likely a new government.
I really like your point about freedom of speech in the US, and let everyone be free to share their sentiments as they are free to paint themselves in whatever light they wish, and this great nation also gives the freedom to be treated to the consequences of whatever they wish to say. I think too many people, perhaps those too young or inexperienced to see that actions have consequences, believe many of our freedoms are one way and protect against others using those same freedoms in a way they don’t agree with.
Just wait for the potential return of Orange Jesus:(
YIKES!
I greatly appreciate Schumer’s words, and yours. Will written.
But I have to do some complaining too…
You choose to echo a conspiracy theory claiming
Netanyahu deliberately allowed Oct. 7 to take place to justify an invasion.
I have zero praise for Netanyahu but this is completely baseless and irrational. There was no shortage of Hamas attacks that could justify an invasion (if one seeks to justify one). IDF did enter Gaza several times under Netanyahu (on a much smaller scale).
His primary failure was assuming Hamas can be tolerated and deterred, not his zeal to invade Gaza.
I sincerely hope that is not true and cannot imagine that it is. But since it is being reported even in the NYT, it is something I must at least consider.
Great post. There can be no logical equivocation. I swear it is nearly impossible to support either Dems or Reps these days thanks to the extreme elements of each party.
That being said, the sexual violence against women committed by Hamas should be required viewing on every campus. MeToo my arse. Hamas makes Harvey Weinstein look like a feminist on the other 364 days. On Oct 7 they committed acts against women that rival anything seen in history.
So sad to read these comments. So killing 17K human beings is justified because other people committed crimes and atrocities? I could understand eliminating those who committed the acts. I thought the Israeli intelligence system was top notch. Didn’t it eliminate murderers all across the world without inflicting collateral damage in the past 60 years? They couldn’t do the same in a territory right next to theirs? I guess the 17K you mention had it coming. Can’t believe I just read this! Will never open or read one of your blogs again.
It’s not justice.
But if you have a better way to prevent Oct. 7th from repeating – which is clearly Hamas’s plan – do share.
I wish there was a way to bring the perpetrators to justice without hurting innocents. When terrorists take control of a country, it’s just not possible.
Israeli security services can do a lot, but can’t deliver magic, and you can’t expect Israel too do nothing based on the assumption that they can do magic.
I think many people recognize this is a unique case of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil – it’s just that some are on the evil side (Islamo-nazism), while they think they are actually on the side of good. This is due to ignorance in the most litteral sense (e.g, just ask most people the most basic question, such as where the names “Israel”, “Palestine” derive from, and you’ll find that an incredible majority has no clue).
Ignorance is fertile ground for hatred and bigotry, including anti-semtism, which is old as time, and has always been soaked into the ideology of the day – any wonder why in this era right wing nuts like “John Dogass” in this comment section can find common ground with LGTBQIAXXXXXXXX and neo-marxist activists? What unites them is hatred towards jews, and the notion that there are basic truths in our world that cannot be erased, such as the ownership of the land of Israel (as it’s been known by Israelites for 3,300 years). They wish to have their revolutions – each in their own version – and build their own version of eutopia that has no roots in actual reality.
They always fail…
There is a choice between engaging in cancel culture to oppose bad (yet not necessarily illegal) speech/expression or engaging in counter speech to oppose bad speech/expression. The latter works best over the longer term, even and especially when confronted by and confronting hate and/or anger.
The Holocaust was the most tragic crime against humanity which saw 6 million Jews killed. Israel has every right to defend itself. No other nation has to deal with this deep trauma.
If Israel wants to defend itself against Hamas terrorists, no one should hold them back.
If Israel wants to turn Gaza into a parking lot, no one should hold them back.
If Israel wants to occupy and humiliate millions of Palestinians, no one should hold them back.
If Israel wants to build settlements in the West Bank against international law, no one should hold them back.
If Israel wants to build an apartheid-lite system in the West Bank (see Hebron), no one should hold them back.
If Israel wants to conduct ethnic cleansing in the Palestinian territories, no one should hold them back.
As per the Likud government manifesto, there will be a Greater Israel “from the River to the Sea”.
And anyone who dares criticize their policy is no less than a vile antisemite!
This gargoyle is not my fellow anything. He’s a domestic enemy.
There were several weeks that passed before action was taken. The Palestinian people could have risen up against Hamas and handed the perpetrators to the IDF. Instead they celebrated the atrocities and ignored the many warnings to evacuate.
There is no such thing as justice. No parent on either side who lost a child will ever feel like justice is possible. Only vengeance. Which creates a loop of violence that perpetuates until one side achieves victory.
World War 2 would still be in progress based on today’s rules of war.
This is a war. Many will die before it is over.
It’s easy for those living in the comfort of a functioning state with liberty for themselves to say a bunch of unarmed women and children — you know, 70% of Gaza’s population — and unarmed men in an open air prison should go get in a battle with a big heavily armed terrorist gang — you know, the war criminals that broke Israel’s “security” barrier, killed over a thousand Israelis, sexually assaulted who knows how many women, and kidnapped over 200 people all in less than 24 hours in October — to go ”fight” it out and get rid of Hamas. And you want them to do this after the unarmed civilians have been subject to weeks upon weeks of bombardment by the IDF and mass deprivation of food, water and just about everything? That’s not serious, that’s bloody inhumane. Do you know what the average Gaza family’s calculation is every day nowadays? Here’s a clue: “Should the entire family sleep together to die all together or should the family separate in hopes that at least one family member survives.” Have a heart, that is the misery of being a Palestinian in Gaza each and every night for weeks upon weeks.
Hamas isn’t unpopular enough in Gaza.
“The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Bombing Gaza like this until Hamas is “unpopular enough”? Talk about a stupid strategy or a genocidal one if thinking that this is about making Hamas unpopular enough in Gaza.