Rep. Omar accused of anti-semitism, apologizes.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Ok so multiple thread hijacks aside and back on topic, apparently I need anti-semitism explained to me as it turns out I'm actually a huge anti-semite and didn't even realize it.

So criticizing pro-Israel money being moved around and influence being spread behind the scenes is bad because it evokes old stereotypes about jews and money and secretly running the world.

So how am I supposed to criticize pro-israel lobbying when lobbying is literally only those 2 things?

And the idea that some american jews feel a sense of loyalty and common cause with israel as the "only jewish state" is something... I'm not supposed to bring up? Or what?

Help me out here, because apparently I'm only about 2 steps away from aguing on message boards that "hitler did nothing wrong" and I would really like to stop myself before I get there.

Help deprogram me please.

IN my experience, most American Jews are lukewarm towards Israel at best. There are some high profile hardliners, and a lot of older Jews, who view Israel with rose tinted glasses, but most have distanced themselves quite a bit. A lot, probably most, of Israel's American support comes from non-Jews with various agendas and military affinities.

However, I have certainly met a large number of genuine antisemites who were clever enough to use anti-Zionist terminology to blend safely into the mainstream conversation for a while (this was back in college during the intifada, and coincided with a rise in hate crimes against Jews).

[Ziggy Stardust]

Ok so multiple thread hijacks aside and back on topic, apparently I need anti-semitism explained to me as it turns out I'm actually a huge anti-semite and didn't even realize it.

So criticizing pro-Israel money being moved around and influence being spread behind the scenes is bad because it evokes old stereotypes about jews and money and secretly running the world.

So how am I supposed to criticize pro-israel lobbying when lobbying is literally only those 2 things?

And the idea that some american jews feel a sense of loyalty and common cause with israel as the "only jewish state" is something... I'm not supposed to bring up? Or what?

Help me out here, because apparently I'm only about 2 steps away from aguing on message boards that "hitler did nothing wrong" and I would really like to stop myself before I get there.

Help deprogram me please.

To be fair, I think it's an extremely small number of people who are ACTUALLY saying that criticizing Israel (or pro-Israel lobbyists) is an anti-Semitic act, in and of itself. The vast majority of the people have a stance that's really more akin to, "Yes, you are allowed to criticize Israel. Just be aware of the implications and the potential for invoking inappropriate connotations related to historical patterns of anti-Semitic discourse". And this really isn't all that different from any other country, to be frank. It's not that much different from saying, "Yes, you can criticize [insert African country X], but in so doing try not to invoke slavery." I mean, the extreme rhetoric of fringe loonies aside, the only real motivation of people is to make you more thoughtful about your pre-conceptions and their associated motivations, it's really not that much different in kind from generic advice like, "Think before you speak."

[Ralin]

I'm reasonably sure Dominus wasn't being serious about realizing he was a closet anti-Semite.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Oh, I realize that he was being sarcastic. But it seemed to me the underlying purpose of his sarcasm was to mock the viewpoint that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic. Which I agree is completely worthy of being mocked. I was mainly pointing out at least some people have a more nuanced position.

[Elfdart]

Over the last forty years is how long we've been tolerating this. Surely, even you can understand something so simple, Gandalf.

Really? I ask for a clarification and I get that? Are you finding your claims hard to substantiate when someone calls on them?

Why is forty years ago some sort of line?

Because everything before Reagan was sunshine & rainbows.

Washington, Jefferson, and their merry band of slaveowners set up a system where only white males could vote, but Reagan was the straw that broke the camel's back apparently. I guess you can really tell who learned their history in educational settings versus the blogosphere.

Things were pretty good in the US from 1945-1975, economy-wise. There was a bad downturn thanks to several energy shocks, and unfortunately many people (including voters) took the neoliberal path and that's why wages have been stagnant for 45 years and the standard of living has gone down.

Back on subject, it was nice to see a Muslim student tell Chelsea Clinton off to her face after she had the gall to show up at a vigil for the victims of the mosque shooting in New Zealand. The student who called bullshit on her rightly drew the connection between the kind of seething anti-Muslim hatred of the shooter and the kind of cavalier attitude Chelsea Clinton showed time and again about attacks on Muslims, whether it was leading pro-Iraq War demonstrations or joining the political lynch mob out for Ilhan Omar's scalp. The belief that Muslims are fair game to be attacked is constant and the difference between the neo-Nazi assassin who shoots them by the score and the smarmy political hack who joins the mob out to assassinate the character of one in particular with the filthiest of lies is a matter of degree.

[Kane Starkiller]

Most of the defense of Ilhan Omar, including in this thread, is basically a red herring. The issue is not what kind of foreign policy Israel has but the implication that US support of Israel and turning a blind eye to Palestinian grievances need to be explained by some kind of widespread bribery of US politicians by Israel as opposed to business as usual for the US foreign policy.

When US hang Kurds out to dry for the n-th time it was understood that US needed Turkey as an ally and didn't want to anger it and thus after the Kurds were no longer needed they were dumped. No one felt the need to explain this move by appealing to some kind of widespread Turkish lobby controlling the US congress through "them Benjamins".

Similarly no one feels the need to explain massive US presence in South Korea through some fancy theory about sneaky Koreans using "them Benjamins" to buy off US congress even though the possible war with North Korea escalating to a fight with China carries far more dire consequences for the US than anything that might happen by supporting Israel.
To the extent that the US presence there is being criticized it is being done from the opposite direction, namely US being imperialistic and sticking it's nose where it doesn't belong, as opposed to US being South Korea's bitch.
One can only imagine the reaction if US decided to, say, station 30,000 troops in Golan Heights the way it does in South Korea.

Back on subject, it was nice to see a Muslim student tell Chelsea Clinton off to her face after she had the gall to show up at a vigil for the victims of the mosque shooting in New Zealand. The student who called bullshit on her rightly drew the connection between the kind of seething anti-Muslim hatred of the shooter and the kind of cavalier attitude Chelsea Clinton showed time and again about attacks on Muslims, whether it was leading pro-Iraq War demonstrations or joining the political lynch mob out for Ilhan Omar's scalp. The belief that Muslims are fair game to be attacked is constant and the difference between the neo-Nazi assassin who shoots them by the score and the smarmy political hack who joins the mob out to assassinate the character of one in particular with the filthiest of lies is a matter of degree.

This is absolute nonsense. The New Zealand attacker was a white supremacist who believed in the "Great Replacement" namely the conspiracy theory that the evil Jews are bringing in brown and/or muslim people (literally subhumans in his eyes) to destroy the white race. He and people like him believe that any dissent among the Jews (such as prominent Jews criticizing Israel) are nothing more than "Jewish tricks" in other words some kind of 4-d chess game to throw whites of their trail.
The idea that this guy, or guys like him will be in any way shape or form influenced by some leftie mildly criticizing a muslim because that muslim crizicized Israel or Jews is absolutely ridiculous.

[Ziggy Stardust]

This is absolute nonsense. The New Zealand attacker was a white supremacist who believed in the "Great Replacement" namely the conspiracy theory that the evil Jews are bringing in brown and/or muslim people (literally subhumans in his eyes) to destroy the white race. He and people like him believe that any dissent among the Jews (such as prominent Jews criticizing Israel) are nothing more than "Jewish tricks" in other words some kind of 4-d chess game to throw whites of their trail.
The idea that this guy, or guys like him will be in any way shape or form influenced by some leftie mildly criticizing a muslim because that muslim crizicized Israel or Jews is absolutely ridiculous.

Wait, are you seriously arguing that a widespread cultural norm that portrays Muslims as the enemy is in no way a contributor towards the rise of anti-Islamic rhetoric and action? Either I am misunderstanding what you are saying, or you were misunderstanding what Elfdart was saying, or you are waving your hands and basically saying that the fact that the Nazis came to power at the same time there was widespread anti-Semitic sentiment in Germany is a complete coincidence.

[Straha]

Most of the defense of Ilhan Omar, including in this thread, is basically a red herring. The issue is not what kind of foreign policy Israel has but the implication that US support of Israel and turning a blind eye to Palestinian grievances need to be explained by some kind of widespread bribery of US politicians by Israel as opposed to business as usual for the US foreign policy.

When US hang Kurds out to dry for the n-th time it was understood that US needed Turkey as an ally and didn't want to anger it and thus after the Kurds were no longer needed they were dumped. No one felt the need to explain this move by appealing to some kind of widespread Turkish lobby controlling the US congress through "them Benjamins".

So, I think this misses a few things:

Firstly, Israel is not an ally in the make of, say, Turkey. Turkey is a NATO member with a strong and robust history of support for the US imperial project (Erdogan largely excepted.) Israel is not. Israel historically eschews supporting US adventurism and military operations, and the US most certainly does not want Israel with it because of its reputation (see: both invasions of Iraq, for instance.) Further, Israel historically hampers US Foreign policy both because it causes tension with countries the US would like to have closer relationships with (see: Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia) and because Israel will often actively lobby against missions central to US foreign policy (most recently: the Iran deal.)

There's, perhaps, an argument to be made that Israel was once a closer ally with the widely understood role its nuclear arsenal played viz-a-viz the USSR, but historical debts like that only go so far.

Secondly, US support for Israel actively undermines its soft-power ambitions. US lead campaigns to push I-Law, Human Rights, democracy, etc. are often met with intense skepticism because of the US's unequivocal backing of Israel, and in reverse the US burns a ton of bridges in places like the UN when it supports Israel to the degree it does. In short, the support the US offers Israel from a foreign policy perspective is liability not a benefit.

Which gets to a third aspect of this we should probably look at, which is the domestic support question. Israel enjoys an unprecedented amount of domestic support in the United States that really is unparalleled. While US thinkers may be obsessed with foreign policy, domestic politics is largely uninterested in these questions beyond security. Case in point: The two things that US policy makers have proudest of over the past seventy years is the creation of NATO and the network of free trade agreements that have ensconced American influence over the world as a cornerstone of modernity. The current President ran a campaign, and won, based in part on opposing both of those projects and has outright questioned American commitments to NATO, and yet he has received no serious public backlash for it beyond some tut-tutting from a couple senators. Similarly, the US does try to project itself domestically as being a bulwark of Human Rights and the Rule-of-Law, yet the President has openly broken bread with Kim Jung-Un, called him his friend, and overturned sanctions on Kim simply because he likes Kim and has suffered little ill-effect.

By contrast, on the domestic level, Israel enjoys widespread and unquestioned support. See: how BDS movements are being made illegal across significant portions of the country.

Which loops back to the question Rep. Omar was trying to answer: If Israel isn't a core part of American Foreign policy, and in fact hampers it in not insignificant ways in some areas, and has relatively few actual connections to the United States in terms of trade and population ties why does it enjoy this abnormal level of support?

It's a complicated question with a complicated answer, but any answer has to include the monetary influence of AIPAC and similar lobbying agencies on a domestic level.