A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

 

7 March 2019 — 1411 mst

The Democratic Party has an anti-semitism problem

Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar, now in her third month in the U.S. House of Representatives, does not like Jews and does not like Israel. She’s a duly elected anti-Semite who accuses American politicians of being bought and paid for by pro-Israel Jewish money. She also slurs the patriotism of American politicians, accusing them of subordinating their loyalty to the United States to their loyalty to Israel. Her comments are crude and ugly, and as Bret Stephens observes in today’s New York Times, she knows exactly what she’s doing.

Omar is not the first high profile Democrat to reveal an anti-semitic worldview. In 1984, Rev. Jesse Jackson, then running a consciousness raising campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination, referred to New York City, home to a large Jewish population, as “Hymietown:”

Rev. Jesse Jackson referred to Jews as “Hymies” and to New York City as “Hymietown” in January 1984 during a conversation with a black Washington Post reporter, Milton Coleman. Jackson had assumed the references would not be printed because of his racial bond with Coleman, but several weeks later Coleman permitted the slurs to be included far down in an article by another Post reporter on Jackson’s rocky relations with American Jews.

A storm of protest erupted, and Jackson at first denied the remarks, then accused Jews of conspiring to defeat him. The Nation of Islam’s radical leader Louis Farrakhan, an aggressive anti-Semite and old Jackson ally, made a difficult situation worse by threatening Coleman in a radio broadcast and issuing a public warning to Jews, made in Jackson’s presence: “If you harm this brother [Jackson], it will be the last one you harm.”

Omar’s bigotry has exposed a split in the Democratic Party. Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership have condemned Omar’s remarks, but younger, leftist, leaders are accusing the Minnesotan’s critics of Islamophobia. Pelosi, et al, are in damage control mode, trying to put out the fire with a resolution that condemns all bigotry, not just anti-semitism.

My view of the situation is similar to that of NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a fellow ex-Minnesotan, who dislikes AIPAC, but supports the right of Israel to exist:

If she thinks the only reason that Americans support Israel is because of Aipac and campaign contributions, she is dead wrong. Americans’ affinity with Israel is rooted in a respect for Israel’s ability to maintain a democracy, albeit with flaws, in a sea of autocratic regimes; it is rooted in a Judeo-Christian religious affinity; and it is rooted in respect for Israel’s contributions to technology, medicine and science. Aipac is the beneficiary of that support, not the cause of it.

But Aipac has abused that privilege. And it is utterly fooling itself if doesn’t understand that there are more than a few Americans, especially on college campuses but not only there, who are enjoying watching Omar give it a punch right in the face. She is saying something others want to say but are afraid to do so — including some members of Congress, I am sure.

I carry no brief for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud, or AIPAC. Their hardline policies exacerbate tensions and make a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict harder to achieve. Neither do I carry a brief for the Palestinians, who are dominated by terrorists such as Hamas whose only goal is obliterating Israel as a nation. The tragedy of Gaza is that it’s led by zealots and thugs in the tradition of Yasser Arafat and Hajj Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who, reports Deborah Lipstadt in her book, The Eichmann Trial:

…had been a guest of the Reich in Berlin during the war, helped organize a Muslim unit of the SS, tried to galvanize other Muslims to fight the Allies, and insisted that the Reich take the harshest actions possible against Jews. In 1943, after learning of the murder of European Jewry, the mufti declared that Germany had “decided to find a final solution to the Jewish danger that would remove their harm from the world.” There is no question about his approval for the Nazi effort to murder Jews.

Omar’s defenders, and many American supporters of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, are not giving sufficient weight to the long, murderous, history of anti-semitism and virulent hatred of Israel that drives much of the Palestinian rage. Instead, they focus on the awful economic, social, and political, predicaments of the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank, earning for themselves an “A” in compassion and an “F” in history.

At this point, I think it best that the debate within the Democratic Party occur in the marketplace of ideas, not in the halls of Congress. Pelosi’s “We hate all hate” resolution calls attention to the dispute, but solves no issue. Neither do attempts by Congress to pass a law against the BDS movement.

Finally, Omar’s defenders need to stop denouncing her detractors as Islamophobes whose criticism of her anti-semitism is proof of their own bigotry. That’s simply an attempt to avoid engaging the serious issues raised by her remarks.