Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Nova Music Festival Exhibition On The October 7th Attack And Condemning Antisemitic Rhetoric At New York Protests
Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on the Nova Music Festival Exhibition on the events of October 7th and condemned antisemitic rhetoric seen at protests in New York City. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
Last Friday, I had the opportunity to visit the Nova Exhibit in New York City, downtown on Wall Street.
The exhibit documents what happened on October 7th. Thousands of beautiful young people gathered as the sun was setting to a music festival. And when you go into the exhibit, the first thing you see is thousands of young people dancing, and embracing each other and happy as can be. Young people, beautiful, in the prime of their lives, the sun shining on them as it was setting, only to realize what had happened.
The rest of the exhibit documents the brutal murder of these young people, innocent, happy young people with so much of their lives in front of them. We see vicious Hamas terrorists, machine gunning them, brutalizing them, and we hear interviews that are done by the families and those who were there. So it was a wrenching experience, the contrast— the exhibit was so well done— of those beautiful young people happily enjoying life, and then knowing that hundreds of them would be slain brutally, scores of them would be kidnapped by terrorists, running away in fear.
What was even worse, or at least adding salt into the wounds was that just a day or two after I visited the exhibit, protestors gathered outside the exhibit chanting repugnant antisemitic phrases, donning banners that read “Long Live October 7th” and “The Zionists are not Jews and not humans.” How low can you go ?
Having visited the exhibit and seeing those young people and then knowing and seeing on film what happened to them at the vicious hands of Hamas, and then having people come outside and protest and say “Long Live October 7th” and “The Zionists are not Jews and not humans.” How repugnant. How despicable. How terribly unnerving that humanity could sink that low.
It is the lowest of the low for anyone to protest an exhibit dedicated to honoring the memory of the precious lives that were brutally murdered by Hamas. It is sick that anyone should show up to an exhibit like this to protest.
The protest and vitriolic rhetoric outside the Nova Exhibit were nothing short of despicable, inhumane, and antisemitic. Antisemitism like what occurred outside the Nova Music Festival Exhibition has no place in our city, in our state, or in America.
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