Is this anti-semitism?

i'm not sure that "Tom $teyer" is antisemitic (i didn't even know the guy had a jewish parent until this blew up and it's unclear he identifies as jewish whatsoever - is "Bill Gate$" an antisemitic comment? is even "George $oro$?"), nb that i also wasn't sure that omar's initial comments about AIPAC were antisemitic either however i do feel like her "allegiance" to a foreign power comments are much more problematic.

tbc omar's point is not simply that we should be allowed to question the US-Israel relationship. her point is that pro-Israel activists and supporters bribe US congressmen to betray & undermine US interests out of loyalty to israel. people think that's antisemitic bc in addition to writing out any kind of legitimate political expression of pro-Israel sentiment as being compatible w/ US support + loyalty (like as if they were normal ppl who love the US and love Israel and consequently want the two to have a close relationship), she is insinuating that there is something malevolent, secret + sinister about pro-Israel support in the US. note that one can argue against the US-Israel relationship and against Israel without these insinuations.

did she say all (or any?) of that or is that your inference?

she said: “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”

isn't it also possible that different people have different conceptions of what constitutes "US interests"? like to Omar maybe that means prioritizing human rights, including those of Palestinians.

yes, and she can argue that we should have different interests without suggesting that ppl who want the US to support Israel are pushing for allegiance to a foreign country. just say "i don't think our interests are served by having such a close relationship with israel" -- her approach has been to characterize the support as itself problematic and coming from loyalty to another country. when she advocates for palestinians does that mean that her is pushing for allegiance to palestinians? or that's only when someone is advocating for Israel?

but the quote you cited above doesn't say anything about allegiance to a foreign country at the expense of this one. I don't understand why it can't be read as criticizing dual allegiance to one's own country and to Israel and simply wondering why it's deemed almost universally acceptable to offer unconditional support for the latter country while it is engaging in apartheid. it's just kind of maddening when we have real debate and division in this country over the things WE are doing to marginalized people but for some reason when Israel is doing it, a whole bunch of people are a lot less outraged.

i think the implication has to be "at the expense of this one" right? otherwise it doesn't make sense - why would you criticize someone for wanting the US to have a good relationship with another country if it benefits them both? like i said, it's not dual allegiance that ilhan advocates for palestinian rights. and if my case against her doing so was "was is it ok for her to push allegiance to a foreign people" you'd rightly notice that i'm making a right-wing xenophobic argument at best. it's not hard to criticize israel even strongly without getting into stuff like "dual loyalties" or accusations of bribery. i don't see why the latter are necessary or valuable or represent liberal values?

I think that the pro-Israel side has a bit of “boy who cried wolf” problem in that accusations of anti-semitism against its critics have become so routine that people tend to not take them seriously unless something grossly offensive is said. Omar seems to be doing some expert trolling here.

i don't disagree but tbc ppl on the right say the same thing about accusations of racism or sexism. these are all charges that are easy to weaponize.

Good point , and Trump expertly trolled liberals on those charges all the way to the White House, so I think the pro-Israel side needs to be careful of over-playing its hand.

the pro-Israel side needs to be careful of over-playing its hand.

A large part of Congress competes to see who can produce the most stridently pro-Israel quotes. The winners of this contest sound so sycophantic as to invoke Poe's Law. However, the US Congress has never been notable for its depth of intelligence or susceptibility to shame. Not long ago Paul Ryan was seen as prime leadership material, so take this as a clue to the general run of the place.

However, the US Congress has never been notable for its depth of intelligence or susceptibility to shame.

that's my theory about why some of these congressfolk are super pissed off about omar. she's making them to respond to questions they've never had to seriously think about that require nuanced answers.

i disagree tho i do think she could serve that role if she was able to make her critiques of israel w/out this other baggage that makes it so easy to dismiss her. contrast with warren's tweet about bibi which was on point, hostile, etc and didn't have a trace of antisemitism:

Corruption—in Israel, in the US, or anywhere else—is a cancer that threatens democracy. We need to fight back. And we can start by having the courage to call it out wherever it occurs. Even among our allies. Especially here at home. https://t.co/Q8kdaj3fiH

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 28, 2019

i was talking to a guy last week who was a pro-palestinian activist and he was arguing about khazar jews stole israel from the palestinians and that antisemitism is a bullshit charge because khazar aren't even semites and palestinians are. i was trying to explain to him that his advocacy would probably be more powerful if he got rid of the genetical/historical myths and semantical etymology bullshit and just made a direct case but he couldn't hear it and ultimately i felt like trying to teach a pro-palestinian activist to be better at his activism went counter to my interests so i let him be. as long as the focus is on the ancillary bullshit it isn't going to be anything any israel supporter is going to worry about. every ZOA + AIPAC person i know irl is in love w/ ilhan and the opportunity she provides to shut down criticisms of israel through poor rhetorical tactics.

w/out this other baggage that makes it so easy to dismiss her.

...

Omar is clearly being dismissed

in case it somehow wasn't clear the other baggage i meant was accusing AIPAC of bribing congressman and Israel supporters as having dual loyalties. you can stay away from these sorts of ideas without diluting a critical message at all. they really are not necessary.

Lobbyists exist to bribe politicians.

You’re not allowed to call it a bribe if they aren’t forking over literal bags of hundos

i think i wrote more about the specific AIPAC thing itt above when it first came up. all that's relevant to say here tho is that you can criticize israel without trying to paint support for israel as illegitimate. that's a tool of ppl looking for excuses for why their primary critiques aren't succeeding (it's bc our enemies are using money and power to suppress us). but of course on the contrary critiques about israel are plentiful and consistently backed by numerous organizations w/ tons of cultural capital as well as many nations. the reasons for US support of israel are diverse and certainly more significant than "they're being bribed."

“Support for Israel is illegitimate” - or unacceptable or whatever - also isn’t anti-Semitism.

when she advocates for palestinians does that mean that her is pushing for allegiance to palestinians? or that's only when someone is advocating for Israel?

― Mordy, Monday, 4 March 2019 20:15 (two hours ago) Permalinkk

co-sign many of Mordy's points above, esp. this. i idea of people having an "allegiance to a foreign country" over and above their allegiance to the US, and that being the nature of the problem, is probably neither the best nor the clearest way to get at the problems with AIPAC and Likud influence over US foreign policy.

I think that her calling out "bribery" is a little blunt and un-nuanced but so what, it's basically to the point. but the idea of competing allegiances reminds me of people who wondered if JFK would be "loyal" to the US or to the Pope. it just inevitably has this troubling aspect of ethnic-based suspicion.

the vargas quote is nuts btw. he's making subtext text.

tbh i'm beginning to think that the influence of Likud and Bibi over US foreign policy is going to implode on its own, through sheer brazenness and incompetence.

milo i said above that i didn't consider the AIPAC comment antisemitic per se (whereas the allegiance comment was much more troubling to me tho also not 100% obviously antisemitic) but it is clearly becoming a pattern of how she talks about israel which is insinuate that it is supported by the US because of bribery and suppression and I don't blame anyone who hears ZOG when that's the case. maybe israel is the way it is bc the US is a violent right-wing country that bombs and terrorizes nations around the world and they're israel's patron and encourage similar behavior from their client state. but no, the tail must be wagging the dog.

I mean hopefully Bibi goes to jail and Likud's grip on the Knesset weakens and so on and so forth but I expect the string of bad outcomes since they did Yitzhak Rabin dirty to continue somehow

xp

a better omar tack might be to ask why bugfuck christians are so all-in for israel and whether we really want people who are actively trying to bring about revelations in charge of foreign policy

i mean i don't think aipac's support explains why sarah palin hung an israeli flag alongside the american one in her office, or why any other politician doing so with a different flag would be an enormous scandal

defo anti-semitism

Ah, Europe: "Participants in a [pre-Lent] street celebration in the Belgian city of Aalst on Sunday paraded giant puppets of Orthodox Jews and a rat atop money bags ... They titled the work 'Shabbat Year'." https://t.co/1L6Q2xi5JC pic.twitter.com/UevISG2KZ7

— Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) March 5, 2019

No question it's anti-semitism.

The "Ah, Europe" rubs me the wrong way though. Should be "Ah, provincial Belgium" iirc. "Ah, Europe" is more or less as useless a phrase as "Ah, world"

Journalist: Yes or no, was Omar being antisemitic?

AOC: I'm loving this opportunity to question the binary nature of truth and I'm excited to sit down and have a real discussion with my constituents and other stakeholders about the structural impossibility of accessing reality.

— Don Hughes (@getfiscal) March 6, 2019

xp Don't like that either ('ah region just a few hundred miles from me') but if that can happen in a Belgian city than I fear anywhere else in Europe too (not necessarily in the exact same format). That should be heeded in condemning this.

Belgian media report that the group behind the controversial float, De Vismooil'n, went to the police after it received death threats over the float.

The group were economising on a so-called "sabbatical year" - saving money on their float in this year's parade to invest more heavily in the following year, members told Belgian news outlet HLN.

"We came up with the idea to put Jews on our float. Not to make the faith ridiculous - carnival is simply a festival of caricature," they said.

"We found it comical to have pink Jews in the procession with a safe to keep the money we saved. You can have a laugh with other religions too," they told HLN.

FFS

Yeah, that's pretty anti-semitic. "What's the big deal, we're just having a laugh! At Jews! We'll mock Muslims next, it's cool."

Re: Omar, I have no idea if she is anti-semitic, but if she's been accused of such three times for three stupid tweets in just the last month or so ... maybe she should tweet less.

xpost

they're using the alt-right playbook of "what, you can't take a joke?"

(and everybody should tweet less)

As a naturalized citizen Omar was required to make an oath to renounce allegiance to any foreign state, it’s part of the standard process, so maybe that’s why that phrase came to mind. It might not have been deliberate trolling despite what I said above.

that Don Hughes tweet is funny, but I though the way AOC has been handling this is pretty good? nuanced rather than evasive. it's a positive thing that a prominent figure is resisting the idea that your only two options are to line up either with the people calling Omar left's Steve King or the people insisting that nothing she said was in any way problematic

yeah, her invocation of "calling in" rather than "calling out" is maybe cheesy on the surface but fuck knows we could use some more of that earnestness lately.

I've come to feel that even a "balanced" approach on this is wrong. What she said was not antisemitic. "Problematic" has become a weasel word. Even if she maybe kinda vaguely inadvertently invoked some antisemitic tropes, the moat around those things has become so wide that it's impossible to have a politically controversial conversation about Israel anymore. And the turning of these remarks into such a media saga is largely cynical. So I feel that even dignifying it is wrong.

She also says in her opinion it is not acceptable for Labour members to be anti-zionist and that to want to deny Jewish people of the right to self-determination is anti-semitic

— Krishnan Guru-Murthy (@krishgm) March 5, 2019

Just say anti-Likud imo.

I’m becoming repetitive but I’m interested in hearing what you think about her not getting dinged for criticizing Israel only for criticizing “Israel influence in US politics”? The two are not synonymous unless you’re David Duke in which case Israeli “oppression” of Palestinians is a metaphor for Jewish oppression of goyim everywhere so you might as well start with how Israel is oppressing us in the US. For anyone else tho it’s notable that critiques of AIPAC or foreign allegiances don’t end up criticizing Israel at all and when ppl do criticize Likud and Bibi (like Warren did last week) there’s zero controversy. Xxp to hurting

maybe 'problematic' is the wrong word, but a lot of Omar's more vociferous defenders are taking the line that anyone queasy about these statements is either oversensitive or just cynically pretending to be offended, which I don't think it's true, and imo it's good that AOC has pushed back on this while also not throwing Omar under the bus?

possibly my view of this is distorted by the fact that I'm in the UK and Labour party anti-semitism has become such a monumental clusterfuck over here and I'm not giving enough significance to how the US context is different? I feel like if more people over here had taken AOC's line then things would be a lot less terrible right now

But she wasn't criticizing Israel for influence on US politics regarding anything except Israel. xp to Mordy

Paul Waldman at WaPo:

Here’s the truth: The whole purpose of the Democrats’ resolution is to enforce dual loyalty not among Jews, but among members of Congress, to make sure that criticism of Israel is punished in the most visible way possible. This, of course, includes Omar. As it happens, this punishment of criticism of Israel is exactly what the freshman congresswoman was complaining about, and has on multiple occasions. The fact that no one seems to acknowledge that this is her complaint shows how spectacularly disingenuous Omar’s critics are being.

You may have noticed that almost no one uses “dual loyalty” as a way of questioning whether Jews are loyal to the United States anymore. Why has it almost disappeared as an anti-Semitic slur? Because, over the last three decades, support for Israel has become increasingly associated with conservative evangelicals and the Republican Party.

Not coincidentally, this happened at the same time as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, the most prominent and influential pro-Israel lobby, went from supporting Israel generally to being the lobby in the United States for the Likud, Israel’s main right-wing party. While AIPAC works hard to keep Democrats in line, its greatest allies are in the GOP, where support for Israel and a rejection of any meaningful rights for Palestinians have become a central component of party ideology. When the most prominent advocates for Israel are people such as Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, “dual loyalty” loses any meaning as a slur against Jews.

The idea that taking issue with support of Israel means one is necessarily criticizing Jews as Jews ignores the last few decades of political developments around the United States’ relationship with Israel. “Supporters of Israel” hasn’t been a synonym for “Jews” since the 1980s. I have to repeat this: In the United States today, a “supporter of Israel” is much more likely to be an evangelical Christian Republican than a Jew.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/05/dishonest-smearing-ilhan-omar/?utm_term=.64a599f6e99d

Nonetheless she wasn't criticized for saying "we should stop aid to Israel" or for saying "Bibi is corrupt" or for something "the blockade against Gaza is a human rights violation" or for saying "the settlements are war crimes" or for saying "Israel is an apartheid state." She got in trouble for speculating about how Americans who are pro-Israel advocates won't let us have an honest discussion about Israel. Can you see how those are very different conversations and how the latter is likely linked to unconscious antisemitic threads in our society about control + power? I'm not saying she meant to evoke those idea but they're so easily avoidable - you don't need to talk about the evils of AIPAC to talk about the settlements unless you actually believe that it's impossible to have a conversation about Israel without first weeding out the influence peddlers who are hijacking our national interest. The left will ultimately need to confront the way that these beliefs actually get in the way of making clean communications about Israel and the US relationship or they'll keep going back to this and it'll start reinforcing because instead of asking "is there something antisemitic in how we approach this question" they'll jump to "antisemitism charges are made irresponsibly to shut up legitimate conversation about Israel" which is the very idea that drew fire in the first place! xp

you don't need to talk about the evils of AIPAC to talk about the settlements unless you actually believe that it's impossible to have a conversation about Israel without first weeding out the influence peddlers who are hijacking our national interest.

It would appear that Omar believes this.

It would not be difficult to argue that this belief is founded upon good evidence. You may not find the argument or the evidence conclusive, but it is just as valid a subject of discussion regarding how US policy toward Israel is formed and maintained as discussions about the legality of the settlements or the continued occupation of the west bank. But rather than allow this discussion to take place on the level of evidence for or against, it is being shouted down as unthinkable, bigoted, and evidence that Omar is depraved. That approach suggests the shouters fear that her argument cannot be overcome by facts and reasoning.

what you think about her not getting dinged for criticizing Israel only for criticizing “Israel influence in US politics”?

Isn't that a legitimate target for criticism? If Bibi speaks to congress to try to stop the Iran deal, it's fair to decry his influence. The Israeli government has been getting pretty directly involved in US politics, particularly in favor of Romney and Trump, this entire decade.

fwiw i'm in a pizzeria playing fox news (silently, thank god) on TV and it's all ilham omar, all the time. she is their bogeyman of the moment. i'm sure my partner's dumbfuck fox news-addicted uncle (and millions like him) thinks she's going to come for his christmas tree tomorrow or whatever.

*ilhan