Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) Image by getty images

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a speech on the Senate floor that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism.

Schumer, the minority leader in the Senate and currently the highest-ranking Jew in government, added his remarks on anti-Zionism to a speech he was giving on health care, saying at the end of that speech that he wanted to thank French President Emmanuel Macron for making the same argument in a speech this 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.

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“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.

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