Ilhan Omar had nothing to
apologise for and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should
have supported her not applauded her forced apology
The
past few days have seen the equivalent of what socialists in the Labour Party
have experienced but it has taken place in the United States. Like Jackie
Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone and myself, Ilhan Omar has experienced hypocrisy,
double-speak and pure unadulterated racism from America’s Zionist lobby. All in
the name of fighting ‘anti-Semitism’ of course! All too many people have fallen
for this 3 card political card trick.
Why
even that well known anti-racist Donald Trump has joined in! Did you remember in Trump’s abysmal State of
the Union address recently, whilst spending 17 minutes attacking refugees at
the border and accusing them of all being criminals, he had time to condemn
‘anti-Semitism’.
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| Ilham Omar |
What
is amazing is that there are still those who don’t understand that when
creatures like Margaret Hodge or Luciana Berger talk about ‘anti-Semitism’ they
don’t mean hatred of Jews but hatred of Zionism and the Israeli state.
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| It's about the Benjamins i.e. money - in the final analysis that is exactly what it's about |
|
| Batya Ungar-Sargon playing stupid - AIPAC exists for no other reason than to pay off politicians and bribe its way across the political circuit |
The
attack on Ilan Omar began with a race
baiting article by the Opinion Editor of The Forward Batya Ungar-Sargon. On Sunday Ilhan
responded to a tweet by The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald, who remarked on how
Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in
Congress, was threatening Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib with punishment for
criticising Israel. Greenwald observed
that it was ‘stunning how much time some
US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation’ even if it is at the
expense of free speech for Americans.
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| Obama's Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro clearly has forgotten the time when he was called a Jew-boy by Aviv Bushinsky, Netanyahu's former spokesman for mildly criticising his ex-boss. Note how 'this tired antisemitic trope about Jews and money' has become the accepted wisdom despite the subject never having been mentioned! |
Of course it’s not really remarkable because Israel is the United States’
closes ally, it forward base in the Middle East. In response Ilhan posted a
reply ‘It’s all about the Benjamin’s
baby’ (a reference to Benjamin Franklin’s picture on US $100 bills).
Immediately Batyar couldn’t resist the temptation to attack one of
Congress’s only two Muslim women, asking ‘Would
love to know who @ilhanomar thinks is paying American politicians to be
pro-Israel.’ when the answer was obvious. Ilhan came back with a one word
reply – AIPAC. This is 100% correct. What would be wrong or misguided would to
be suggest that US Foreign Policy is a consequence of AIPAC’s bribes to
politicians. AIPAC’s bribes are part of a seamless web of political corruption.
AIPAC stands for American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
To which Batty responded
that ‘freshman
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar tweeted something anti-Semitic.’ For Zionists, even
the truth can be anti-Semitic. It is an incontrovertible fact that AIPAC sponors
and bribes US politicians. Batty claimed
that ‘AIPAC does not endorse candidates,
nor does it make campaign contributions, though its members and employees do.’
This is a straightforward lie. AIPAC does
little else. It runs hostile campaigns against those it doesn’t like. It takes all elected Congressmen on a free
trip to Israel after they have been elected.
It speaks volumers that The Forward’s Opinion Editor feels the need to
lie so blatantly in order to sustain her allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’. Like Margaret Hodge, Luciana Berger and
others of her ilk in Britain, lying is second nature to the apologists for
Zionism.
Anyone
who doubts this should read the painfully honest article by Ady Barkan ‘What
Ilhan Omar Said About AIPAC Was Right - I’m ashamed to admit that endorsing
AIPAC positions was all about the Benjamins for me and my candidate.’
Ady is a
former Israeli lobbyist who in his dying days has become repulsed at what he
was doing. Ady described how fresh out of college in 2006 he was working with
the Democratic congressional candidate in ‘deepest
red Ohio’ when an AIPAC staffer offered $5,000 if the candidate, Victoria Wulsin,
would support AIPAC’s position on Iran and another issue. Despite being pro-peace they agreed to do
Aipac’s bidding for the money. Ady wrote that ‘It
was, I am ashamed to say, definitely about the Benjamins.’
The
article is particularly sad because Ady is only 35 and is dying from a ‘poorly
understood neurological disease with no treatment’ which has paralysed him. He
can only write thanks to modern technology that tracks the location of his
eyes.
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| 'Antisemitism has no place in the US Congress' except when it comes from me, Trump and the Christian Right! |
The
Jewish Forward has played a major part in this story but most of their writers
haven’t taken the nakedly Jewish supremacist and racist approach of Batya
Ungar-Sargon. One such is Joshua Leifer’s Ilhan
Omar Writes Bad Tweets. But The Right Has Jewish Blood On Its Hands, which . Unlike Batty Joshua doesn’t try to defend AIPAC
which he describes as exterting a ‘massive sway over American politics and
works to prop up a brutal, unjust status quo of perpetual occupation in
Israel-Palestine, but there are ways to critique this responsibly, without
resorting to words and phrases that evoke unsavory tropes.’ Contrast this
with Batya’s apologetics for an organisation whose sole purpose is to support
the Israeli far-Right and its Occupation.
My own
view is that Ilhan’s suggestion that it was all abut the ‘Benjamin’s’ was a mistake, not least because the supply of corrupt money
does not account for Aipac’s influence. Its political influence stems from
being aligned with powerful imperialist and corporate political forces in the
United States. However what is equally clear is that nothing Ilhan said was in the
least anti-Semitic.
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| What is a story about Jewish donors if not about Jewish money? |
I am
reminded over a similar furore in Britain in the Autumn of 2015 when the late
Gerald Kaufman MP attributed the pro-Zionist stance of the Tories to ‘Jewish
money’ from Conservative Friends of Israel. It was an unfortunate phrase but it
was also not anti-Semitic. Or if it was
then the Jewish Chronicle which has repeatedly carried the same phrase is one
of Britain’s most anti-Semitic publications! Jewish money is a theme of much of
the British press, for example stories about how Jewish donors are no longer
supporting the Labour Party for example Labour
funding crisis: Jewish donors drop 'toxic' Ed Miliband. This however
gave the CAA the excuse to launch
an attack on Kaufman, a Jewish MP, who had been a stalwart supporter of the
Palestinians.
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| One of Omar's biggest critics was Republican House leader, Kevin McCarthy who unlike Ilan has peddled genuinely anti-semitic nonsense |
Leifer pointed
out that Kevin McCarthy was the same person who accused George Soros and
two other Jews of trying to buy the election.
His tweet included a scowling picture of Soros and the inevitable #MAGA
(make America great) which is the accompaniment of Trump’s America First slogan.
Leifer
pointed the finger at those ‘American
Jewish establishment organizations — like AIPAC, the ADL, and the AJC’ who
‘have found common cause with the right
around support for the Israeli government and anti-BDS laws.’
However the most articulate article in The Forward is that of Peter Beinart, a liberal Zionist, a senior
columnist as well as being a professor of journalism.
In The
Sick Double Standard In The Ilhan Omar Controversy Beinart wrote that Ilhan
Omar ‘was wrong to tweet that the
American government’s support of Israel is “all
about the Benjamins.” This is undoubtedly right. It is too crude and
simplistic to reduce the support of American imperialism for Israel to the
ability of the Zionist/Israel lobby to bribe politicians although a tweet is
hardly the place for a sophisticated analysis.
If that was all that was needed to
remove the Zionist entity then the Arab governments could have done it years
ago. Beinart also acknowledged that ‘AIPAC’s
influence rests partly on the money its members donate to politicians. But it
also rests on a deep cultural and religious affinity for Israel among
conservative white Christians, who see the Jewish state as an outpost of
pro-American, “Judeo-Christian” values in a region they consider hostile to
their country and faith.’
Where I disagree with Beinart is
with his suggestion that Omar’s tweet was ‘irresponsible.’
In what was a tortured explanation, he argued that ‘Accusing a largely (though not officially) Jewish organization like
AIPAC of buying politicians is different than accusing the NRA or the drug
industry of buying politicians because modern history is not replete with
murderous conspiracy theories about how gun owners and pharmaceutical
executives secretly use their money to control governments.’ AIPAC is not a
Jewish group, it is a Zionist political group and as such should not be immune
from criticism lest it offend Jewish sensibilities. In any case there are many
people who allege that the gun lobby and big pharma use their money to control
or influence government policy.
Those who accuse Omar of ‘anti-Semitism’
are saying that to be a pro-Israel group is to be Jewish. Factually this is nonsense. Beinart also says
that Omar ‘was right to apologize last month for a 2012 tweet in which she also
evoked anti-Semitic stereotypes by accusing Israel of having “hypnotized the world” about its behavior in the Gaza Strip.’
Again I disagree. The fact is that
the world has stood by whilst Israel has, in the words of former Chief of Staff
Benny Gantz, sent parts of Gaza back into the stone age. Accusing Zionists of hypnotizing
the world (or its leaders) is only anti-Semitic if you equate Zionists with Jews,
in which case it is you who is anti-Semitic! However Beinart puts the attacks
on Ilan into perspective:
Guaranteeing Jews in the West Bank citizenship, due
process, free movement and the right to vote for the government that controls
their lives while denying those rights to their Palestinian neighbors is
bigotry. It’s a far more tangible form of bigotry than Omar’s flirtation with
anti-Semitic tropes. And it has lasted for more than a half-century.
Beinart points
out that Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin, ‘who has called for stripping Omar of her committee assignments,
spoke at a fundraiser for Beit El, a West Bank settlement from which
Palestinians are barred from living even though it was built—according
to the Israeli supreme court—on land confiscated from its Palestinian
owners. It is these double standards by Israel’s supporters which should have
been condemned yet instead she was ‘publicly rebuked’ by the entire Democrat’s House
leadership. For his enthusiastic endorsement of land theft and state-sponsored
bigotry in the West Bank, Zeldin has received no congressional criticism at
all. To the contrary, he’s a Republican rising star.’
As Beinart
points out that if the Republicans denouncing Omar were sincerely opposed to
anti-Semitism, they would not support Trump. He lists just some of his anti-Semitic
remarks.
·
In 2013 he tweeted that “I’m
much smarter than Jonathan Leibowitz—I mean Jon Stewart.”
·
He ran for
president on a slogan laden with anti-Semitic associations from the 1930s:
“America First.”
·
In 2015 he told a Jewish audience that “You’re not gonna support me because I don’t want your money… you don’t
want to give me money, but that’s ok, you want to control your own politicians
that’s fine.”
·
In 2016 he retweeted an image of Hillary Clinton surrounded by money
and a Jewish star.
·
He closed his
presidential campaign with an ad that showed three Jews—Janet Yellen, Lloyd Blankfein and George
Soros—alongside language about “global
special interests” that “control the
levers of power in Washington.”
·
In 2017, he
said there were “very fine people”
among the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville and
·
in 2018, his
racist fear mongering about a caravan of Central American migrants provoked a
Pittsburgh man to commit the worst anti-Semitic atrocity in American history.
Unlike Omar, he has not apologized for any of this.
Beinart
concludes that ‘if you denounce Ilhan
Omar but support Donald Trump, you don’t really oppose bigotry. You don’t even
really oppose anti-Semitism. What you oppose is criticism of Israel.’ Republicans
‘are not trying to police bigotry or even
anti-Semitism. They’re using anti-Semitism to police the American debate about
Israel.’
Another
excellent article, from Mehdi Hassan (below) points out the hypocrisy of those
who pretend that AIPAC is just a harmless and anodyne debating society. He quotes the late Uri Avnery as saying that
if AIPAC proposed a resolution calling for the abolition of the 10 commandments
then 80 senators and 300 Congressmen would sign it.
What this affair
tells us is that AIPAC and the Zionist lobby is becoming more twitchy and
nervous. Never before has the Zionist
lobby been discussed in America. Millions of people will see through the self-serving
apologetics for this Israeli PR group. Although she does not realize it, Ilhan
Omar has broken a taboo. What is
disappointing is that other radicals who were elected last November have kept
quiet with Alexandria Ocadio-Cortez tweeting that Ilhan was right to apologise
when what she should have been doing was calling out her detractors.
What is gratifying
is that groups like Jewish Voice for Peace have come out unequivocally in
support of Ilhan. Jewish progressives realize that the attack on Ilhan is
motivated more by white racism than any concern for Jews.
Tony Greenstein
February 12 2019, 1:00 p.m.
Rep. Ilhan Omar speaks to members of the media after a news conference
on Capitol Hill on Jan. 24, 2019. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
In 2005, Steven Rosen, then a senior official with
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, sat down for dinner
with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, then of the New Yorker. “You see this napkin?” Rosen asked
Goldberg. “In twenty-four hours, [AIPAC]
could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin.”
I couldn’t help but be reminded of this anecdote after Rep.
Ilhan Omar, of Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, was slammed
by Democrats and Republicans alike over her suggestion, in a pair of tweets, that
U.S. politicians back the state of Israel because of financial pressure from
AIPAC (“It’s all about the Benjamins baby,”
she declaimed).
Was the flippant way in which she phrased her tweets a problem? Did it offend a
significant chunk of liberal U.S. Jewish opinion? Did it perhaps unwittingly
play into anti-Semitic tropes about rich Jews controlling the world? Yes, yes,
and yes — as she herself has since admitted and “unequivocally”
apologized for. But was she wrong to note the power of the pro-Israel lobby, to
point a finger at AIPAC, to highlight — in her apology —
“the problematic role of lobbyists in our
politics, whether it be AIPAC, the NRA or the fossil fuel industry”?
No, no, and no.
Rosen, after all, wasn’t the first AIPAC official to boast
about the the raw power that “America’s bipartisan pro-Israel
lobby” exercises in Washington, D.C. Go back earlier, to 1992, when
then-AIPAC President David Steiner was caught on tape bragging
that he had “cut a deal” with the
George H.W. Bush White House to provide $3 billion in U.S. aid to Israel.
Steiner also claimed to be “negotiating”
with the incoming Clinton administration over the appointment of pro-Israel
cabinet members. AIPAC, he said, has “a
dozen people in [the Clinton] campaign, in the headquarters … and they’re all
going to get big jobs.”
Go back further, to 1984, when Sen. Charles Percy, a moderate
Republican from Illinois, was defeated in his re-election campaign after he “incurred
AIPAC’s wrath” by declining to sign onto an AIPAC-sponsored letter and
daring to refer to Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat
as more “moderate” than other
Palestinian resistance figures. AIPAC contributors raised more than a million
dollars to help defeat Percy. As Tom Dine, then-executive director of AIPAC, gloated
in a speech shortly after the GOP senator’s defeat, “all the Jews, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the
American politicians — those who hold
public positions now, and those who aspire — got the message.”
Nearly four decades later, as members of the U.S.
political and media classes pile onto Omar, are the rest of us supposed to
pretend that AIPAC officials never said or did any of this? And are we also
expected to forget that the New York Times’s Tom Friedman, a long-standing
advocate for Israel in the American media, once described
the standing ovations received by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
from members of Congress, as having been “bought
and paid for by the Israel lobby”? Or that Goldberg, now editor-in-chief of
The Atlantic and dubbed
“the most influential journalist/blogger
on matters related to Israel,” called
AIPAC a “leviathan among lobbies, as
influential in its sphere as the National Rifle Association and the American
Association of Retired Persons are in theirs”? Or that J.J. Goldberg,
former editor of the Jewish weekly newspaper The Forward, said
in 2002, in reference to AIPAC, “There is
this image in Congress that you don’t cross these people or they take you down”?
Are we supposed to dismiss Uri Avnery, the late Israeli peace
activist and one-time member of the Zionist paramilitary, the Irgun, who once remarked
that if AIPAC “were to table a resolution
abolishing the Ten Commandments, 80 senators and 300 congressmen would sign it
at once,” as a Jew-hater? Or label Jan Harman, a former member of Congress
and devoted defender of Israel, an anti-Semite for telling CNN in
2013 that her former colleagues on Capitol Hill had struggled to back Barack
Obama’s Iran nuclear diplomacy to due “big
parts of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States being against it, the
country of Israel being against it”?
To be clear: AIPAC is not a political action committee and
does not provide donations directly to candidates. However, it does act as a “force multiplier,” to quote
the Jewish Telegraph Agency’s Andrew Silow-Carroll, and “its rhetorical support for a candidate is a signal to Jewish PACs and
individual donors across the country to back his or her campaign.” As
Friedman explained to me in an interview
in 2013: “Mehdi, if you and I were
running from the same district, and I have AIPAC’s stamp of approval and you
don’t, I will maybe have to make three phone calls. … I’m exaggerating, but I
don’t have to make many phone calls to get all the money I need to run against
you. You will have to make 50,000 phone calls.” (Is Friedman an anti-Semite
too? Asking for a friend.)
What makes this whole row over Omar’s remarks so
utterly bizarre is that so many leading Democrats, loudly and rightly, decry
the pernicious and undeniable impact of special interests, lobbyists, and
donations on a whole host of issues — from the role of Big Pharma and Big
Finance; to influence-peddling
by Saudi Arabia; to the “grip” that the NRA has on the debate over gun control,
to quote
Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal. But any mention of AIPAC and lobbying in
favor of Israel? “Anti-Semitism!”
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| It's 'offensive and wrong' to suggest members of Congress are 'bought off' to support Israel but not wrong to suggest this takes place over gun control |
Do they have no shame? Take Donna Shalala, a new member of
Congress from Florida’s 27th District (and a former cabinet member under
Clinton).
Yet here is the same Shalala boasting last month that she
didn’t allow the NRA to “buy me during
the campaign.”
Got that? It’s “offensive
and wrong” to suggest the pro-Israel lobby tries to buy off politicians.
But it’s totally fine to suggest the pro-gun lobby does. (The irony is that
AIPAC’s leading lights haven’t been shy about making their own analogy with the
NRA. “I’m sure there are people out there
who are for gun control, but because of the NRA don’t say anything,” Morris
Amitay, former AIPAC executive director, once
admitted. “If you’re a weak candidate
to begin with,” he continued, and your record is “anti-Israel and you have a credible opponent, your opponent will be
helped.”)
And so we should thank Omar, the freshman lawmaker, for
having the guts to raise this contentious issue and break a long-standing
taboo in the process — even if she maybe did so in a clumsy and
problematic fashion.
But you don’t have to take her word for it. “When people ask me how they can help
Israel,” former Israeli prime minister and uber-hawk Ariel Sharon once told
an audience in the United States, “I tell
them: Help AIPAC.”
See
