It seems like only yesterday that Chuck Schumer was giving an impassioned speech slamming his own left flank for “the rise of anti-Semitism in America.” But that speech was given in December. Yesterday’s speech from the nation’s highest-ranking Jewish official was a diatribe against the Jewish state of Israel. It was also foreign election interference, which Democrats like Schumer have spent the last eight years telling us is a “threat to democracy.”

Like so many other things, it’s okay when they do it — like Barack Obama did when he interfered in Israel’s elections in 2015.

Schumer began his speech by dubbing himself “a ‘Shomer Yisrael’ — a guardian of the people of Israel” because his last name “derives from the Hebrew word ‘shomer,’ or ‘guardian.’” That’s awfully sweet of him, but the theme of Schumer’s 40-minute address was to give Israel a rhetorical lashing that was more in line with that nation’s enemies and vicious critics.

He said our ally needs to hold elections to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other “radical right-wing Israelis in government and society.” Netanyahu has “lost his way,” the senator alleged, and “extremist” Israelis like him have become “major obstacles” to “lasting peace” and the “work towards a two-state solution.”

Yes, Netanyahu has rejected a two-state solution at the moment, but do you know who else has rejected it? The Palestinians — on at least five separate occasions dating back decades. “From the river to the sea” isn’t a slogan for peace.

“The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7,” Schumer added. “The world has changed — radically — since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.”

We suppose Schumer’s criticism was at least more civil than Joe Biden’s private and hot mic moments calling Netanyahu an “***hole” and promising he’d have a “come to Jesus meeting” with the Jewish leader. But being more civil than Scranton Joe is an awfully low bar.

If the Israelis won’t let Schumer and his fellow Democrats interfere by forcing an election, the senator warned, Schumer and his fellow Democrats will interfere in Israeli policy: The U.S. “will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course.” The Biden administration has already spent weeks trying to micromanage Israel’s war effort.

Netanyahu will indeed face Israeli voters at some point, and they will either affirm that he has prosecuted the war effectively or they will hold him accountable for whatever security failures allowed Hamas to attack in the first place. That is not up to Chuck Schumer.

Besides, if Democrats want people to hold leaders accountable for the war that began on October 7, how about insisting that the Palestinians oust Hamas before any aid to Gaza is delivered?

Schumer did give a nod to “both sides,” acknowledging that Hamas started this by “raping women, executing babies, desecrating bodies, brutalizing whole communities.” It also “knowingly invited an immense civilian toll during this war” when its soldiers “use innocent Gazans as human shields.” He blasted the media for giving “Hamas a pass by hardly ever discussing this shameful practice.” He also hit left-wing protesters who “decry the loss of Palestinian life but never condemn this perfidy or the loss of Israeli lives.”

Yet the senator clearly misunderstands the Middle East. He name-dropped Iran just one time: “Many believe that Iran motivated Hamas to disrupt this process” of normalizing relations in the region. Saying it that way is not exactly a profile of courage.

Iran is the primary obstacle to peace in the Middle East. The extremists who run Tehran fund the extremists in Gaza, who then slaughter innocent Israelis and hide under hospitals and schools to ensure that Palestinian “civilians” are killed when Israel fights back. Yes, Schumer condemned those things, but the both-sides-ism rings incredibly hollow, and neglecting Iran is inexcusable.

We’re hardly the only critics of Schumer’s duplicitous speech. “It is grotesque and hypocritical for Americans who hyperventilate about foreign interference in our own democracy to call for the removal of a democratically elected leader of Israel,” noted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “The Democratic Party doesn’t have an anti-Bibi problem. It has an anti-Israel problem.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson agreed, saying, “It’s just plain wrong for an American leader to play such a divisive role in Israeli politics while our closest ally in the region is in an existential battle for its very survival.”

The Israelis were hardly more receptive to Schumer’s interference. “Israel is an independent and proud democracy that elected Prime Minister Netanyahu, not a banana republic,” Netanyahu’s party Likud said in a statement. “Prime Minister Netanyahu leads a determined policy that is supported by a huge majority of the people. Contrary to Schumer’s words, the Israeli public supports a complete victory over Hamas, rejects any international dictates to establish a Palestinian terrorist state, and opposes the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza.”

In other words, Israelis are united in pursuing victory over enemies at their very gates who would utterly destroy them. They care little at the moment for the politicized rantings of a second-rate demagogue from New York.

Update: Asked for comment, Joe Biden said, “He made a good speech.”