The Left Is Making Jews Choose
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
In the past three weeks, Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar attempted to discuss the U.S.-Israel relationship three times. And each time, her words descended into anti-Semitic tropes.
“It’s all about the Benjamins!” She wrote in a now deleted tweet, misconstruing the Israel Lobby in a way that evoked the anti-Semitic trope of Jewish money controlling the levers of power.
“I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is O.K. for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” she said at a town hall meeting , evoking the anti-Semitic canard of dual loyalties.
“I should not be expected to have allegiance/pledge support to a foreign country,” she tweeted , since “our democracy is built on debate,” again evoking the idea that there are sinister forces at work demanding allegiance to Israel that undermine U.S. democracy.
Omar apologized for the initial tweet and acknowledged the hurt she had caused. But she only seemed to double down on the very sentiments that had offended Jews in the first place.
Almost as upsetting as having a member of Congress repeatedly say things that evoke the most horrific episodes in Jewish history was the response to Omar’s words on the progressive left. Instead of expressing support for American Jews horrified that a sitting Congresswoman – a person with access to state power who has a vote on whether the most powerful military in the world goes to war – they started a hashtag on Twitter: #IStandWithIlhan.
Omar, a refugee and one of the first two Muslim women to be elected to Congress, has been repeatedly and deplorably targeted by bigots with ugly, anti-Muslim sentiments and even threats to her life. Every decent human should vigorously oppose these kinds of attacks.
But her supporters went further. They based their defenses around a bizarre, self-contradictory combination of denying that her words evoked anti-Semitic stereotypes while implicitly admitting her words did evoke those stereotypes with elaborate deflections and whataboutisms. (“Don’t throw the book at a Muslim woman of color while ignoring the many, many white Christian members of Congress who’ve trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes and tell me you’re doing it to protect Jews” was a typical sentiment .)
The whataboutism ramped up after House Democrats announced they would be bringing a resolution against anti-Semitism in the wake of Omar’s comments.
“Dems doing more to ‘confront Omar’ than Donald Trump,” tweeted Symone Sanders of CNN. “Where is the resolution about the president?”
course, House Democrats did call for censuring President Trump for his remarks defending the White Supremacists who marched in Charlottesville; it was blocked by Republicans, who controlled the House. And just two months ago, Congressman Steve King was censured by name for defending white supremacy, and stripped of all his committee memberships.
Still, it’s true that Republicans like Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan have not apologized for their own deeply anti-Semitic tweets, just as the President has never apologized for pushing an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory cited by the murderer of 11 Jews at prayer in the Tree of Life Synagogue. And for now, the Democrats’ resolution about anti-Semitism appears to be on hold , with members of the Black and Progressive Caucuses reportedly not wishing to distract from fighting President Trump.
Fair enough. But a more disturbing rationale emerged among some of Omar’s other supporters on the progressive left: a kind of resentment towards Jews over the fact that House Democrats would come to our defense.
And it’s this resentment that has replaced the “intersectional” ideal of fighting all forms of bigotry together. For when it comes time to fight anti-Semitism, there’s always a more pressing issue.
Thus, Linda Sarsour on her Facebook page raged against years of “blatant anti-Muslim racism, islamophobia, propaganda against Muslims” which “Democratic leadership were never swift to condemn.” “You want a resolution?” she wrote. “Condemn all forms of bigotry. All forms of bigotry are unacceptable.”
All but the one Omar waded into, apparently. “We stand with Representative Ilhan Omar. Our top priority is the safety of our sister and her family,” Sarsour concluded.
By comparing what Omar said to Islamophobia, Sarsour was implicitly admitting that her words were hurtful to the Jewish community. And yet, this didn’t make them worthy of censure. The opposite; Sarsour was enraged that members of the U.S. government would stand up for Jews. The outrage that there are no resolutions protecting other vulnerable people was seamlessly melded into the outrage that there might be one protecting Jews.
“One of the things that is hurtful about the extent to which reprimand is sought of Ilhan is that no one seeks this level of reprimand when members make statements about Latinx + other communities (during the shutdown, a GOP member yelled “Go back to Puerto Rico!” on the floor),” she tweeted.
Ocasio-Cortez, too, seemed to implicitly admit that Omar’s words were racially problematic by comparing them to a racist remark against herself. And yet, instead of concluding that it’s wonderful to see racist language attacked full on — she claimed to be “hurt” by seeing Congress stand up for Jews.
Ocasio-Cortez went on to suggest that Jews “call in” Omar instead of calling her out, apparently unaware that Omar’s Jewish constituents have been unsuccessfully trying to do just that for a year now , thanks to yet another anti-Semitic tweet from 2012 accusing Israel of “hypnotizing the world.” “To jump to the nuclear option every time leaves no room for corrective action,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote, apparently forgetting that this week was the fourth time Omar invoked an anti-Semitic stereotype.
“It’s not my position to tell people how to feel, or that their hurt is invalid,” she wrote . “But incidents like these do beg the question: where are the resolutions against homophobic statements? For anti-blackness? For xenophobia? For a member saying he’ll ‘send Obama home to Kenya?’”
But do these incidents, actually, beg the question? And why do these questions only come up when Jews are seeking redress for harm?
Ocasio-Cortez, like Sarsour, has bought into the notion that is prevalent on the left and the right: that it’s Jewish safety or Muslim safety; Jewish self-determination or Palestinian self-determination; Jews can thrive or black people can.
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Good article. I think I have an answer to the question in the title. Most American Jewish will remain with the dems. They remained after Obama's policy towards Israel, anti-Semitism within the democratic party isn't going to stop them. The hard left has had a history of anti-Semitism.
Most recently:
"I think it’s time for a national discussion about Barack Obama and his administration and the stench of anti-Semitism that’s in this White House….
There’s been a relentless attack on Benjamin Netanyahu hatched from the Oval Office.… We don’t have a media in this country, we have propagandists. There’s a few journalists who stand out but that’s not “the media” that’s a few journalists. And that’s what we have and they repeat what Obama tells them to repeat… that’s why I call them the praetorian guard media. Obama has a hate on for Netanyahu, he has a hate on for Israel. And I firmly believe he’s anti-Semitic. What other person would hang around with a Jeremiah Wright, a Rashid Khalidi… an Al Sharpton? Would reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood and bring them into the Oval Office, reach out to this group CAIR and bring them into the administration in various capacities? What kind of president would treat the Islamo-Nazi regimes with kid gloves, as a matter of fact in the case of Iran negotiate with them, beg them, bend over backwards for a deal. Israel sees Obama’s handiwork in the Middle East....Mark Levin
This policy?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will give Israel $38 billion in military assistance over the next decade, the largest such aid package in U.S. history, under a landmark agreement signed on Wednesday.
PBS ANCHOR Nick Schifrin looks now at the path to this divisive debate on Capitol Hill.
Now we get the views from leaders of two politically active Jewish organizations in Washington.
J eremy Ben-Ami is founder and president of J Street, which describes itself as a pro-Israel, pro-peace advocacy organization. And Josh Block, chief executive officer of The Israel Project, which describes itself as an educational organization dedicated to informing the media and the public about Israel and the Middle East. He worked at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, for nearly a decade.
Excerpt from the show:
Jeremy Ben-Ami, I want to bring the Israeli government into this conversation. Many journalists who have lived in Jerusalem, including me, have been accused of anti-Semitism for criticizing Israeli policies. Do you believe the Israeli government has encouraged the idea that critics of Israel are anti-Semitic?
Jeremy Ben-Ami:
Well, I think there is a pattern, and there are some in Israeli politics, I think there are some in the politics of this country, who do try to weaponize the charge of anti-Semitism in order to shut down debate. And I think there are instances where language goes too far. And I would agree with Josh, there are those instances. But there are many other instances and many more where the charge of anti-Semitism is used in order to delegitimize the critic or the journalist or the person who is talking, and it does shut down debate.
It stifles the discussion of the actual issues that matter. How do we best end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What are the actions that can be taken to help Palestinians and Israelis find a better future? And, sometimes, we can't have that discussion because the, first time you criticize Israel you're called an anti-Semite.
Nick Schifrin:
Josh Block, is that debate being scuttled by people who are using the word anti-Semite too much?
Josh Block:
I think it's a specious argument to suggest that there's no criticism of Israel or that criticism of Israel is regularly stifled by such accusations. In fact, I think what we see is, again, the weaponization of this dialogue by folks on both the left and the right who are seeking to advance their political gain.
I think that we ought to focus on repairing the breach and educating those about the need to engage in civil dialogue around these policy issues. Now, again, I think it's certainly the case that we want to see evolution in Ilhan Omar's views.
But I have to say, I'm deeply alarmed by the resistance that we all saw in the Democratic Caucus to moving forward swiftly and clearly in a denunciation. The circus that took place is a concern.
I think, for American Jews, those of us who have believed that for, however many decades, that the elected officials United States would act unequivocally and forcefully without delay in any way to confront these things, we should pause for a moment and really reflect on where we are as a society and how much more we have to do.
Nick Schifrin:
Jeremy Ben-Ami, I want to bring up President Trump. You mentioned him before.
A couple of incidents here during the campaign, he tweeted an ad with Hillary Clinton — there it is — "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever" inside the Star of David. His closing ad during the campaign — I think we have got some stills of that — he talked about money and global special interests over video of those three people, prominent Jews.
More recently, in Charlottesville, when white supremacists chanted "Death to Jews" there, the president said there were fine people on both sides, and more recently suggested activist George Soros, who's Jewish, might have funded the campaign — or the caravan, rather, coming up from Mexico.
Is that accelerating anti-Semitism?
Jeremy Ben-Ami:
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, I think that the tone for the country is set at the top. And, unfortunately, I think that this president and some of the enablers around him — and, in this case, unfortunately, it is within the Republican Party, and it is on Capitol Hill and in the White House — they are enabling an atmosphere in which this kind of hate is festering.
And the Pittsburgh shooter wasn't motivated by tweets that were critical of Israeli policy. The Pittsburgh shooter was motivated by this atmosphere of anti-immigrant, anti-Jewish hatred that has been fomented and made possible. And I don't see the Republican Caucus engaging in kind of condemnation of the president that we see here.
Nick Schifrin:
Very quickly from both of you, are you worried that Israel is becoming a partisan issue? We have got a new generation of Democrats, younger, more progressive, who are more interested in criticizing Israel.
JOSH BLOCK:
Look, I think there's a unanimous consensus among the American public that Israel is one of our closest allies in the world. That's not changing.
I think we see a strong bipartisan support for Israel in Congress. The U.S.' relationship isn't reduced to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is much more there. And so I think we will see a robust relationship for many years to come.
Nick Schifrin:
Quick answer on that?
I do think that Israel is becoming a partisan political football.
And I think that folks on the right are trying to turn it into a culture war issue , rather than a serious policy discussion.
SOURCE :
There are two varying points of view from J Street and AIPAC. I think there points mostly say it all.
BINGO !
Formerly The Emmy Award Winning MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.......
It sure isn't the same program now is it..... (since MacNeil retired and Lerher quit) It's nothing but another liberal dribble spout.... No news at all.... and the only reporting that goes on is one sided....
Not at all like it used to be.... (in fact it's pretty unwatchable)