Beware the Shifty ‘Principles’ of Schumer and Schiff

Democrats like Senator Chuck Schumer and Senator Adam Schiff are threatening another government shutdown, this time over funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, they say, must be stopped. Both men are operating from personal political interest rather than principle. How do we know? Principles are consistent. The senators’ views are not.Mr. Schumer affirmed Israel’s right to self-defense in Gaza where the Israel Defense Forces pursued their Hamas targets and collaterally injured or killed civilians used as human shields. The Senator of New York warned against holding Israel to unreasonable standards and attributed the human suffering of the Palestinians to Hamas terrorists, not those trying to stop them.Mr. Schumer, however, can’t seem to find the same grace and generosity of spirit for American ICE and border patrol agents. They, too, pursue criminal targets amid hostility and constant threats to their safety, but Mr. Schumer claims that it is law enforcement that is responsible for the “chaos” in the streets. “What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling — and unacceptable in any American city,” he said.Mr. Schiff, too, supported Israel’s actions in Gaza including arms transfers to the IDF and called the International Criminal Court’s pursuit of warrants against Israeli leaders for their involvement in the Gaza war “misguided and repugnant.” He agreed that Israeli soldiers, doing the difficult job of extracting targets in densely populated areas surrounded by armed “resistance” fighters, should not be automatically maligned when operations go sideways and innocents are unfortunately injured. However, in the case of ICE, and Border Patrol, according to Mr. Schiff, the deployment of federal law enforcement whom he called “poorly trained” has led to “escalating chaos” and “horrifying” results in Minnesota. They kill people “in cold blood,” he claims. So why does the principle of the right to self-defense apply only to the IDF and not to American agents? Why is it understandable when civilians are killed during military action in Gaza, but inexcusable when one is killed while assaulting ICE officers?Those with antisemitic appetites eat this up. Two Jewish senators defending Israel’s right to practice self-defense but not their own country’s right to do the same. The Jews put Israelis first, not Americans, they conclude. The truth, however, is that on the American stage Messrs. Schumer and Schiff are more politician than Jew. They act in neither Israel’s nor America’s interest, only their own. This was never about principles, just plain old politics.Democrats, reeling from the fraud scandal still unfolding in Minnesota, and increasingly in California and Maine (all blue states), need to give their party a pseudo-moral battle to wage that isn’t about whether politicians should be stealing billions from their citizens. That’s one fight they know they are losing.Every rational person understands that refusing to hand criminal illegal aliens over to immigration officials and sending organized, well-funded revolutionaries into the streets will force ICE and Border Patrol to defend themselves and sometimes make mistakes. Messrs. Schumer and Schiff know it, too. All they have to do is pretend that the right to self-defense and the presumption of innocence only extend to those in other countries where the people don’t vote to audit their books.The truth is that neither the IDF nor ICE and Border Control are perfect 100 percent of the time but neither are they the “Gestapo” intentionally hunting down innocents. Democrats just need them to be. Of course, altering a principle to suit the situation defeats the purpose of having principles, but no one has ever accused Messrs. Schumer or Schiff of being the torchbearers of integrity. The American Jewish community can hold itself to a higher standard. Those who defended the IDF have no reason not to defend ICE and Border Patrol, too.

Beware the Shifty ‘Principles’ of Schumer and Schiff

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