Schumer won’t admit that the Dems are abandoning Israel

By Post Editorial Board

October 17, 2018 | 7:16pm | Updated 

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Some Democrats are trying furiously to push back against a New York Times article reporting what’s been patently clear for years to any honest observer: The party is abandoning its support of Israel.

“Senate Democrats are very strongly pro-Israel and will remain that way,” declared Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Would that it were so. In fact, as the Times noted, several Democratic candidates, including some of the party’s rising stars, are running on blatantly anti-Israel platforms.

This reflects the rapid leftward hurtle of the ever-more-dominant Democratic base: A 2016 Pew poll found that liberal Democrats, who’d favored Israel by 48-to-10 percent as recently as 2001, had turned to the Palestinians by 40-to-33 percent.

The same poll found only 48 percent of moderate Democrats, a rapidly vanishing breed, favoring Israel. On the GOP side, 77 percent of conservatives and 64 percent of moderates were pro-Israel.

Which explains why so many of the same Senate Democrats whom Schumer touts have grown increasingly soft on Israel.

His New York colleague, Kirsten Gillibrand, came out against the same Israel Anti-Boycott Bill she’d once co-sponsored. Jersey’s Cory Booker voted against the Taylor Force Act that cut off funding for the Palestinians while they subsidize terrorists and their families. And Vermont’s Bernie Sanders tried to place three anti-Israel activists on the 2016 Democratic platform committee.

All three senators are eyeing a run for president; clearly, they know where primary voters stand. Then again, who can forget how delegates at the 2012 convention raucously shouted down language declaring Jerusalem as Israel’s capital?

Speaking of which, numerous Democrats who’d voted to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem publicly condemned President Trump for doing just that.

As for Schumer, recall that he gently announced his opposition to the Obama nuke deal with Iran — and then went mute, refusing to lobby fellow Democrats.

Even still-pro-Israel elected Democrats can sniff their party’s political winds — so don’t expect them to stay pro-Israel much longer.