US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the federal government, announced on Wednesday that he will release a book on antisemitism. 

Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, released a statement saying that Schumer’s book, titled “Antisemitism in America: A Warning,” will be on shelves in February 2025.

The book will chronicle Schumer’s life in Brooklyn during the 1960s, his time at Harvard University, and his years in Congress. Schumer will also discuss the recent surge of antisemitic incidents across the US following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing Israel-Hamas war. 

“At its core, my book is a warning,” Schumer said in a statement. “If America fails to understand the context and history of antisemitism, if America’s darker impulses ultimately overwhelm its better angels, an age-old truth will prove true once again: that antisemitism inevitably leads to violence against Jews and a rise in bigotry in our society at large.”

“Jewish Americans never thought it could happen here in America. Now, for the first time, they’re worried it could,” Schumer wrote. 

Schumer has traditionally been a strong supporter of the Jewish state. Speaking at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference in 2019, Schumer said, “You can be, all at once, completely Jewish, completely pro-Israel, and completely American.” Schumer also opposed the controversial 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, a policy championed by former President Barack Obama, and joined a 2017 resolution objecting to condemnations of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 

In recent months, however, as the Democratic base has soured on Israel, Schumer has adopted a more adversarial posture toward the Jewish state. In March, while on the Senate floor, he called for new elections in Israel, stating that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “lost his way,” a nearly unprecedented statement by such a high ranking US official calling on the people of a close democratic ally to replace its leadership.

Schumer also hesitated to join Republican House leader Mike Johnson (LA) in extending an invitation to Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress. Although Schumer eventually joined the invitation and attended Netanyahu’s speech last month, he refused to shake the Israeli prime minister’s hand. 

The announcement of Schumer’s book was met with significant skepticism among observers on both sides of the political aisle. 

“Chuck Schumer saw Jewish students being blocked from attending college campuses, issued Jewish only wristbands and being intimidated with physical violence and thought how can he make some more money off of it,” Stephen Miller, contributing editor of The Spectator, said on X/Twitter.  

“I gotta be honest, every form of prejudice is declining in 21st century America. None are rising, including antisemitism. By admitting this, we will be a better country where people can feel more optimistic and at ease,” wrote progressive reporter Zaid Jilani.

“What a complete f—king clown,” wrote Daily Wire host and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro.

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A sign reading “We Support Israel” outside a synagogue in Bethesda, Maryland was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti this week, according to the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington.

“The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington is deeply disturbed by the discovery yesterday of antisemitic graffiti on a ‘We Support Israel’ sign outside Congregation Beth El of Montgomery County,” the group said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Jewish Federation noted that the incident came just two days after similar antisemitic graffiti was found near Bethesda Elementary School in Maryland this past weekend. “Israel rapes men, women, and children” was spray-painted on a school sign, and “Free Gaza” was reportedly painted onto a nearby crosswalk and sidewalk.

“We call on our community and allies to continue making it clear that antisemitism and hate speech have no place in Greater Washington,” the Jewish Federation said in its statement. “We are in close contact with local law enforcement, and we appreciate their swift responses to these incidents to ensure our community’s safety.”

The Bethesda area has a large Jewish population — about 45 percent of Maryland’s Jewish community lives in Montgomery County.

The latest incidents of vandalism came amid a troubling wave of antisemitic incidents in Maryland.

Baltimore police announced on Saturday that they arrested a man who is suspected of a hate crime for setting a fire outside the Jewish Museum of Maryland earlier this month. The museum is located between two historic synagogues on Baltimore’s Lloyd Street: the Lloyd Street Synagogue and the B’nai Israel Congregation. The fire on Aug. 4 was set outside the museum but also right next to B’nai Israel, which reportedly shares a security gate with it.

Weeks earlier, Baltimore’s mayor and police chief denounced a slew of antisemitic incidents in which the homes of Jewish families in the Glen section of the city were graffitied with swastikas. As many as 10 homes were targeted in the spree of hate, according to a local NBC affiliate, shocking locals who were dismayed that the incidents occurred in their neighborhood.

Such outrages aren’t new. In December, for example, vandals twice slashed a pro-Israel sign displayed on the lawn of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation in Pikesville, local media reported. In a later incident in March, a gang of teenagers mugged and assaulted two Jewish men who were walking into their synagogue. The youths reportedly chased one of the men and stole a “large amount of cash” from the other. More recently, an Israeli flag was ripped and stolen from the porch of a doctor’s office earlier this summer.

Across the state of Maryland, which had the seventh most antisemitic incidents in the US in 2023, outrages targeting the Jewish community increased 211 percent compared to the prior year, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s latest data.

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News coverage in the Martha’s Vineyard Times tends to stick to local concerns — labor negotiations between the Steamship Authority and the union that operates the ferry between the island and Cape Cod, the perennial shortage of “affordable” housing for year-round and seasonal workers, shark sightings.

For the past few weeks, though, the Times has been on a campaign against the Martha’s Vineyard Chabad after it hosted a Jewish cultural festival event featuring the singer Matisyahu.

Instead of writing about the festival, the newspaper highlighted a small anti-Israel protest against it. Then it ran another story focusing on a protester-participant, and a third story attacking the festival’s organizer.

One Times news article referred to Israel’s “brutal military campaign” and quoted a protester who said, “We are here to reject the presence of someone who performs and fundraises for the Israeli Occupation Forces and the AIPAC lobbying group, condones violence against the Palestinian people and land in the name of Jewish safety, and denies ongoing genocide.”

The onslaught of hostile coverage has generated a disappointed response from readers.

One of them, Jackie Mendez, took to the newspaper’s comments section. “What is Jewish culture? The MVTimes doesn’t care to explain. Instead, it chooses to give yet more time and space to the ignorance and hatred of Israel,” Mendez wrote. “This newspaper gave editorial space to this kind of rabid Jew-hatred.”

Another reader, Judith Hannan, a former columnist for the Times, wrote in a letter to the editor, “The main issue I think so many of us have is that an event to celebrate a rich and diverse culture, under a literal and metaphorical broad tent, was covered with such bias so the reader walks away with no more understanding of Jewish heritage and culture than they had already.”

The rabbi of Chabad on the Vineyard, Tzvi Alperowitz, wrote in an email to his community that he was disappointed by the coverage. “The Jewish Culture Festival was a tremendous and remarkable community celebration. Close to one thousand people gathered in absolute harmony and unity to proudly celebrate Jewish culture and identity,” Alperowitz wrote. “But instead of a beautiful story about Jewish resilience and celebration in spite of the most tragic year for Jews since the Holocaust, the MV Times cynically chose to paint their coverage of the event through the lens of the few protesters who stood outside.”

Alperowitz continued: “That’s a choice that reflects poorly on the MV Times and its editorial team. Every rational individual can see straight through the piece and understands that it was a cynical use of clickbait to turn a proudly Jewish event into an opinion article bashing Israel.”

Who is in charge at the Martha’s Vineyard Times? The paper was purchased in January of this year by Stephen Bernier, who installed as publisher Charles Sennott. Sennott is a former Middle East bureau chief of the Boston Globe, where he was notorious for the anti-Israel tilt of his coverage. The watchdog organization Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) called Sennott “a virtual spokesman for the Palestinian side,” warning that “under Charles Sennott, the Boston Globe is in danger of reviving its former tradition of blaming Israel first, no matter what the facts.”

Since leaving the Globe, Sennott has been pursuing nonprofit journalism ventures, the latest of which is The GroundTruth Project, where he is listed as the founder and editor-in-chief. The GroundTruth website also lists former New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet as one of its directors, and the Ford Foundation as among its funders.

CAMERA has also been sharply critical of Sennott’s work with the GroundTruth Project. A CAMERA report on a three-part Sennott series attacking Christian Zionism called the work “outrageous” and said it featured “bigoted and sloppy reporting.”

“Sennott indoctrinates young journalists with his long-standing anti-Israel, anti-American, and anti-Evangelical biases,” Dexter Van Zile, then with CAMERA, wrote in a 2019 blog post for the Times of Israel. Van Zile then quoted David Parsons, vice president and senior international spokesperson for the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. “There are only two journalists I will never work with again and one of them is Charles Sennott,” Parsons said.

In a Dec. 15, 2023, LinkedIn posting, just weeks before assuming the Martha’s Vineyard Times role, Sennott faulted Israel for deliberately and “with impunity” killing scores of Palestinian and Lebanese journalists. Israel has disclosed evidence that some of the “journalists” were members of Gaza-based terrorist organizations. Sennott’s article, while faulting Israel, also omitted that Hamas restricts the activities of journalists in Gaza, with threats of violence.

I wrote to Sennott asking him whether he is trying to turn the weekly island newspaper into a vehicle for pushing an anti-Israel agenda, or whether there is a conflict in his dual roles at the Martha’s Vineyard Times and at the Ground Truth Project.

So far, I haven’t gotten a reply from him.

Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.

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