The Politics of Chutzpah
In leveling scathing remarks at Israel and its Prime Minister early this week, US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from Brooklyn, exhibited a quintessential Jewish trait—chutzpah. Not chutzpah in the positive sense of courage or fortitude, the way the word is sometimes used when incorporated into English, but in the unambiguously negative sense of gall or audacity, as it is used in Yiddish. By calling Netanyahu an “obstacle to peace,” and saying that his government “no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7,” the highest-ranking Jewish official in American history “out-chutzpahed” every Jewish-American politician who preceded him, and may even have “out-chutzpahed” Israeli politicians, for whom chutzpah is a highly developed art form.
Not to be outdone, Prime Minister Netanyahu swiftly followed up with a chutzpadik move of his own—an attempt to wangle a Republican invitation to address a joint session of Congress. The move was a zetz (a punch or blow, another Yiddishism) aimed directly at Schumer, who must approve an invitation before it can be extended to Netanyahu, and who will appear to be playing the partisan politics he claims to disavow if he refuses. But even if Schumer nixes the invite, Netanyahu will get the consolation prize of addressing the US House of Representatives—a stage large enough even for his brand of political theater. Either way, as usual, Bibi wins.
I think Netanyahu deserves double chutzpah points for turning the same screw a second time. As you may recall (who could forget?), Netanyahu outraged Democrats in March 2015, when he breached political and diplomatic protocols by orchestrating his own address before a joint session of Congress to torpedo the US-led Iranian nuclear negotiations. Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Netanyahu confidant, and former Republican operator, Ron Dermer, schemed with House and Senate Republicans in planning the address behind President Obama’s back. A record 60 Democrats, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, boycotted the session. Like Schumer’s remarks this week, Bibi’s speech before Congress that day may have been accurate (and, I must admit, powerful—as Schumer himself acknowledged at the time), but that didn’t make it right.
The same can be said of Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017. The message that decision sent was also correct: Jerusalem was and is the capital of Israel, and the time had long come for free-floating “Jerusalem” to be replaced by “Jerusalem, Israel,” as the “Place of Birth” on passports of US citizens born here. But the message’s delivery—one-sided, triumphalist, outside any Israeli-Palestinian negotiating framework (i.e., chutzpadik)—only confirmed for Palestinians that the US was a biased mediator.
In each of these cases, chutzpah enabled political leaders to air what needed to be aired, but ultimately delivered self-defeating results. Netanyahu’s speech sowed the seeds of Congress’ shifting sympathies toward the Palestinians. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem pushed any US-brokered peace deal off the table. Schumer’s attack on Netanyahu could completely backfire: by offending Israelis with his overreach, and unwittingly boosting our pride in Bibi’s pushback, Schumer might just have helped Bibi get reelected.
You’d think Schumer would have known better than to play the politics of chutzpah without foreseeing its consequences. Perhaps he’s forgotten the power of Yiddish—the very language that helped him land his US Senate seat in the first place. In 1998, Schumer only edged out his opponent, three-term incumbent, Republican Al D’Amato, when D’Amato crossed a line with New York voters by calling Schumer a putzhead—a Yiddish vulgarism The New York Times was quick to inform its readers meant something significantly more perjorative than “fool.”