Was Rep. Ilhan Omar being anti-semitic?

Can someone explain to me what part of which tweet was anti-semitic? Was it mentioning money along with AIPAC?


I don't get it. Her tweets seemed pretty mild to me, and the fierce reaction to her from Dems is very discouraging.

But maybe I'm not woke enough to get this.


if you have to ask, you’ll never understand


She is suggested that the only reason politicians support Israel is because they are paid by AIPAC.  Suggesting Jews are only supported for money is a classic anti-Semitic trope. 


She has a long history of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic comments, which is now becoming acceptable to the far left:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/opinion/sunday/israel-progressive-anti-semitism.html


The only saving grace is that she was universally condemned in a non-partisan manner. 


If that doesn’t convince you, look at David Duke’s Twitter account where he is commending her. That says it all. 


At best, it showed that she is not familiar with the stereotyping trope of associating Jews with money as a conspiracy theory for anything that is disliked. At worst, she was familiar, but decided to go with it anyway.

This may explain better:

Ilhan Omar Just Made It Harder to Have a Nuanced Debate About Israel

The Minnesota congresswoman has given credence to caricatures of critics of Israel.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/02/ilhan-omar-bds/582520/



mayhewdrive said:
if you have to ask, you’ll never understand


She is suggested that the only reason politicians support Israel is because they are paid by AIPAC.  Suggesting Jews are only supported for money is a classic anti-Semitic trope. 


She has a long history of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic comments. 


The only saving grace is that she was universally condemned in a non-partisan manner. 


If that doesn’t convince you, look at David Duke’s Twitter account where he is commending her. That says it all. 

 so you're saying that her comment should be interpreted as saying that the only reason for support is because of money, and not as  a general criticism that money is part of the problem?

seriously? That's the thing? That distinction?


Is it possible to talk about the influence of money on politicians' support of Israel and not be anti-Semitic? Because that's how this is appearing to me.



From the Atlantic article:

The problem with Omar’s comment is it leaves the impression that she sees Jewish money, and Jewish money alone, as the explanation for why politicians support Israel. U.S. political leaders, along with many Americans, back Israel for an enormous range of cultural, religious, historic, and security-related reasons. Many American Jews support Israel, but their views are complicated and diverse. And they are joined in this by many non-Jews, including, notably, politically powerful evangelical voters.

And the pile-on by Dems was disgraceful if you ask me, and is further evidence (he's gonna say it) of the power of the Israel lobby.

I wonder, mayhewdrive, if you think the following things are true.

There is a powerful lobby for Israeli interests, and one of the ways they wield that power is through donations.

Or do you believe that all support for Israel is driven by only the purest of moral considerations?

If that were true, there would be no need for AIPAC and their cousins, would there?



sprout said:
From the Atlantic article:


The problem with Omar’s comment is it leaves the impression that she sees Jewish money, and Jewish money alone, as the explanation for why politicians support Israel. U.S. political leaders, along with many Americans, back Israel for an enormous range of cultural, religious, historic, and security-related reasons. Many American Jews support Israel, but their views are complicated and diverse. And they are joined in this by many non-Jews, including, notably, politically powerful evangelical voters.

 oh, horse poop. She was pointing out the importance of money in politics in this particular area.  Is the writer saying that money has no impact? 

How can someone derive that "impression" from a single sentence? She quoted a damn movie title ferchrissakes!

It says far more about the writer than her.

It's so frustrating that critical discussion about Israel's influence on American politics is so quickly shut down with calls of anti-semitism.

I'm sure that at this point mayhewdrive thinks I'm being anti-semitic.


troll alert


Clearly, you didn’t come here to ask a real question, but rather to inflame and troll.  This is no different than someone posting a thread saying “Is blackface offensive?” Or “Do ALL lives matter?”


drummerboy said:


I'm sure that at this point mayhewdrive thinks I'm being anti-semitic.

No - you’ve proven you are  


And maybe they're just tired of it, but Trump's reference to the Trail of Tears over the weekend got 100 times less response from the Dems than Omar's tweets did.

Hell, they could have united around focusing on Trump's tweet, rather than, once again, engage in the circular firing squad.

Is support for Israel really more important than invoking (and practically threatening) genocide while talking about a prez. candidate?




drummerboy said:

Or do you believe that all support for Israel is driven by only the purest of moral considerations?

No. Most of the support is because Israel is a highly reliable military and spy system for the USA in the Middle East.


Israel has hypnotized the world   May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel


Israel is one of the USA's most reliable allies    Any other choices for that in the Middle East?


Thanks for the trope. While Israel does do evil, this gives them the capability to detect and remove greater potential evils:


Israel took out Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Opera

And took out Syria's nuclear reactor in 2007:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outside_the_Box


The USA could not do this dirty work themselves. And a nuclear Syria or Iraq would have added a large layer of dangerous chaos to the world. 


Anthem said:
Israel is one of the USA's most reliable allies    Any other choices for that in the Middle East?

The Saudi's just knocked themselves out of that competition.


sprout said:
At best, it showed that she is not familiar with the stereotyping trope of associating Jews with money as a conspiracy theory for anything that is disliked. At worst, she was familiar, but decided to go with it anyway.
This may explain better:
Ilhan Omar Just Made It Harder to Have a Nuanced Debate About Israel

The Minnesota congresswoman has given credence to caricatures of critics of Israel.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/02/ilhan-omar-bds/582520/



 This.  Just like blackface differs from clownface makeup due to it’s racist past, there is an anti Semitic history of linking money to Jewish people.  


I happen to believe she was not specifically making the money connection specifically to Jewish politicians, but politicians as a group.  Wasn’t the tweet that caused all of this in response to McCarthy?


Saying that a particular lobbying/interest group uses its money and voting power to sway politicians is hardly controversial (or false).  When it intersects with the latent (and not so latent) and easily inflamed the Jews-control-the-world idea that is out there, people get sensitive about it.  That said, I don't think its per se off limits to conment on AIPAC's, or any PAC's, lobbying power.


Why would she single out support for Israel in a tweet about influence in politics?   The money spent by Unions dwarfs support for Israel.    And she was dead wrong about AIPAC buying candidates - they don't even donate.   


This whole discussion about what she said about lobby-ing money and whether that makes her an anti-semite is neither interesting nor important. A more interesting question is: do the palestinians have a right to their own state? or, if not, do they have the right to vote in the state of israel?


She did nothing wrong.  We should be able to talk about those that spend money to lobby for foreign governments without being labeled anti-semitic. 



Litmus test - when you are on the same side of an issue as David Duke, you are either racist or anti-Semitic.


mayhewdrive said:
Litmus test - when you are on the same side of an issue as David Duke, you are either racist or anti-Semitic.

 That's unfair, and uses guilt by association to stifle discussion.  Recently David Duke endorsed Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, a rare anti-war/US. imperialism voice in US politics.  She disavowed him, but people are still trying to smear her based on that.  So, stop doing that, because you are giving power to David Duke.  APAIC spends tons of money trying to influence US. politics and we should be able to talk about who gets the money and how that influences their positions and if that is beneficial.  Hiding the influence of money does not help anyone. 


Speak broadly about campaign finance.  If you are going to pick out individual donors or groups of donors,  pick the biggest groups and the biggest donors.  If you single out a smaller player only you risk sounding like that player is your hobby horse. 



mayhewdrive said:
Litmus test - when you are on the same side of an issue as David Duke, you are either racist or anti-Semitic.

 makes the world very black and white for you, doesn't it?


Anthem said:
Why would she single out support for Israel in a tweet about influence in politics?   The money spent by Unions dwarfs support for Israel.    And she was dead wrong about AIPAC buying candidates - they don't even donate.   

right. AIPAC has no influence on donations. Their only power is moral persuasion. vampire 



Supporters of Israel have always understood the importance of maintaining political influence.  Politics more than anything else is the reason we recognized Israel fairly early on and continue to support Israel.  Well, politics and evangelicals worried about Armageddon.   I can only assume that it is a matter of acute concern for supporters of Israel to see waning support among young people.

As WW II and the memories of the Holocaust enter history books and are forgotten by most Americans, it will be more and more challenging to combat alternative narratives of the history of Israel.



mayhewdrive said:
if you have to ask ...

 I did.

She is suggested that the only reason politicians support Israel is because they are paid by AIPAC.  Suggesting Jews are only supported for money is a classic anti-Semitic trope. 

This helps me. 

... you’ll never understand

 So maybe this is wrong.


Speak broadly about campaign finance.  If you are going to pick out individual donors or groups of donors,  pick the biggest groups and the biggest donors.  If you single out a smaller player only you risk sounding like that player is your hobby horse. 



So is the argument that lobbying money in general has no influence on legislation or just that Jewish lobbying money has no influence on legislation?  

I certainly have heard many of the outraged parties in this incident express their belief that gun rights legislation is driven solely by money from the NRA and the gun industry so, if it is the former, I find this apparent contradiction perplexing.


Anthem said:
Speak broadly about campaign finance.  If you are going to pick out individual donors or groups of donors,  pick the biggest groups and the biggest donors.  If you single out a smaller player only you risk sounding like that player is your hobby horse. 


then you might be relieved to find out that Rep. Omar has been on this issue of money in politics more broadly for some time.

https://www.ilhanomar.com/elections/


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