Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Oct. 4, 2023. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

By Jacob Kornbluh October 13, 2023

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is heading to Israel with a group of Democratic and Republican senators on Saturday, a day after returning from a congressional visit to Asia, to meet with Israel’s top leadership.

In a brief interview on Friday, Schumer said he is making the trip to assure Israelis that the U.S. stands with them, Democrats and Republicans alike. He said he intends to ask Israel’s top leaders about what they need in a military aid bill to fight Hamas.

“I’m going to tell them,” he said, “that I will do everything I can to get the full aid package through the Congress and to the president.”

The House is currently paralyzed due to GOP infighting about choosing a new speaker, following the ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The Senate will resume work on Monday. “This bipartisan group is showing that we are with Israel and Israel should gain strength from it,” Schumer said of the congressional delegation.

Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish politician in the U.S., said he is “sad and angry” about the “viciousness and brutality” of the Hamas attack. More than 1,300 Israelis were killed in the Saturday massacre. Joining him in the delegation are two other Democrats, Sens. Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Mark Kelly of Arizona, and two Republicans, Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. Rosen is also Jewish and Kelly is married to Jewish former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. 

The Democratic leader said the most horrific atrocity he learned of — which he said hasn’t been widely publicized yet — was at a kibbutz near the Gaza border in which the terrorists gathered more than hundred Israelis, pushed them into the recreation room and shot them all dead. He didn’t give the name of the kibbutz, though similar stories have been reported from other kibbutzim attacked by Hamas. The Israeli consulate in New York did not immediately respond to questions about the killings Schumer described.

Schumer said it reminded him of what happened to his great-grandmother, who lived in Ukraine — then part of Galicia — when the Nazis invaded in 1941. SS stormtroopers ordered her to gather all her children and grandchildren on her porch and gunned down all 17 members of the family.

“So for every one of us who is Jewish,” Schumer said, Hamas’ attack “is even worse because it reminds us of horrible things that happened to our family during the Nazi years.” 

Schumer also said he supported Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to release graphic images of Hamas’ victims Thursday to show the terrorists’ brutality. 

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