Is this anti-semitism?

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.

You say that now but when the Irish-American lobby rises to deny the UK a trade deal

(This will never happen)

Like Ireland needs to spend money on persuading Americans to love Ireland, claiming you're Irish is a national pastime.

No on has yet written a best-seller Eat, Pray, Shillelagh.

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.

Why would anyone believe something so absolutely correct?

Don’t think you need to when you’ve got The Devil’s Own.

tbc "impossible to have a conversation about" is not synonymous with "we talk about it all the fucking time"

Mordy's point is incomplete for two reasons.

First, that just describes parties registered under FARA. AIPAC and other US-based groups are not registered under FARA.

Second, I believe Mordy is citing the "foreign principals" numbers. But there is also the money the country itself spends. On that account, Israel is #2.

https://www.opensecrets.org/fara

Also, the argument that others buy influence and turn the money crank even harder is not an argument that influence buying is not a problem and does not corrupt the process of creating sound policy.

i for reals read what she said and thought little of it tbh but i don't know shit so

I imagine the reason we don't hear more about South Korean lobbying is that there's no pro-North Korea interest to speak of in the U.S. so it's probably taken for granted.

I can't think of another situation where people identifying in some way with another country is considered to be fifth-columnism, in the way that it happens with israel. Maybe people accused irish-americans of promoting republican politics in the US, I dunno, it feels different.

anti-Catholic nativism endured sufficiently long in this country for people to accuse John F Kennedy of being a tool of the Pope or whatever

it's especially weird coming from the left (the "allegiance to a foreign country" stuff)

but arguably that's also been a part of the russia-trump stuff too

Iirc people made a suspicious stink that Kennedy was going to pledge allegiance to the Vatican over America, or whatever the anti-Catholic trope was at the time.

xpost Jinx!

Is "allegiance to" something of a term of art in this case? Does it have a specific meaning, like eg preferring that nation's interests over your own?

Maybe people accused irish-americans of promoting republican politics in the US.

They certainly did and not without good reason.

Truth.

I can't think of another situation where people identifying in some way with another country is considered to be fifth-columnism, in the way that it happens with israel.

is this functionally very different from the suspicions people have of muslims in the u.s.? main difference being that there has for a while been a single political entity with which for jews to be identified. there not being a single bloc of muslim-friendly geopolitical interest doesn't seem to stop the sharia-law-panic people from talking and acting as if there is, out there, somewhere outside the u.s.

AND WITHIN IT, TO OUR HORROR

East-asians in another era, also. Slavic people during the cold war, and yeah, Muslims today.

A reminder that the motivation is always, always, always somehow, somewhere, truly economic--someone benefits.

https://qz.com/1201502/japanese-internment-camps-during-world-war-ii-are-a-lesson-in-the-scary-economics-of-racial-resentment/

“Based on an accumulation of evidence, we now know that the government’s action was partially initiated by California corporate agribusiness interests hoping to satisfy their own lust for land while ridding themselves of competition from the state’s most productive family farms.”

As I recently learned from The Mushroom at the End of the World, the Bracero program was started shortly thereafter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_program

a nuance that's sort of being glossed over is that Omar didn't say anything about Jews having allegiance to Israel, she said that members of congress are being asked to have allegiance to Israel

^^ Explicitly unpacked in that WaPo article.

The distinction with, say, Irish republican sympathies is that those sympathies weren't thought to be in contradiction to american interests.

Omar's entire talk has been transcribed here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-ilhan-omar-25142297

(I'm sure i'm wrong about this, I'm just trying to identify why it feels different to me)