Is this anti-semitism?

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

She didn't criticize Israel though or Bibi, she criticized Americans with an allegiance to a foreign country and AIPAC - an American run lobbying organization. ymmv on whether you think concentrating your critiques of Israel on American pro-Israel advocates is prudent or problematic but there is a difference between the two. xxp fwiw I feel like I've written a lot of words on this topic so I'm not inclined to keep going back to this well. I think David Hirsch and David Schaub have both written well on a lot of these issues so if you're still not sure what is bothering ppl there are resources out there. I may have posted this here before but I think it's important: https://engageonline.wordpress.com/2016/04/29/the-livingstone-formulation-david-hirsh-2/

It's a win-win situation for Fox News since even when the sound is off you (not you GG, obviously) can direct your totally-not-racist ire towards the fact that she is a brown-skinned woman wearing a headscarf.

xp

Questioning your opponents’ motives is one of the most common rhetorical strategies in politics though. Ruling it out of bounds in this one particular case would be difficult. xp

what she actually said has been weirdly underquoted, and I'm not really clear on what the larger context of her remarks was or even what the venue was (but it wasn't on twitter!). This is one of those rare situations where a fuller transcript of her remarks would be expiatory, or damning

My own sense on the subject is that the rules by which US domestic politics are currently governed have encouraged US government policies to become the captive of any players willing to inject large amounts of money into the system. It is only due to the confluence of several unusual factors in US domestic politics that US foreign policy toward Israel has become similarly captive, not simply to pro-Israel lobbying in the most general sense, but to the specific policies of Likud and its conservative coalition partners.

No other foreign countries wield such influence. This mésalliance is not considered illegal under current rules and is not more corrupt than many others, such as the influence of the Koch brothers or oil companies, but it is difficult not to see them as all similarly corrupting and thus all similarly undesirable. There's nothing exclusively Jewish about this legal, but corrupting, process, which was constructed by wealthy US conservatives for their own benefit, but the pro-Israel lobby has taken full advantage of it and has consequently corrupted the entire process of forming US policy in regard to Israel. Pointing this out is not anti-Semitism.

quick quiz which foreign country's lobby spends the most money on US political influence

saudi?

going to guess kingdom of saud

iirc south korea

explains the k-pop influx

whoa

re saudi arabia
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/11/saudi-arabia-declares-war-on-americas-muslim-congresswomen/

This subject is not taught in US schools, and most certainly not discussed in US media, so I would have guessed it was Saudi Arabia. Surely, you would not suggest that South Korea's purchasing political influence is benign?

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/08/foreign-interests-fara-lobby-watch-exclusive/

https://i.imgur.com/fKfUEnJ.png

Ireland, wtf? What a waste of money!

It's the Ireland Tourist Board.