Ilhan Omar Getty Images
The 2018 midterm will bring many new faces to Washington, but few will find as much adoration as Ilhan Omar. One of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress,
Omar, who will represent Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, is a
Somali refugee with a celebrity aura and an uplifting story.
What went curiously unmentioned in all the flattering post-election
coverage, however, was that Omar, who replaces Keith Ellison — a former
acolyte of anti-Semitic minister Louis Farrakhan — also has some exotic
notions about the Jewish people.
In a 2012 tweet, for instance, the Democrat explained that “Israel
has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see
the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza #Palestine #Israel.”
Meanwhile, the other Muslim woman headed to Congress
is Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian
immigrants who wants to cut aid to the Jewish state because supporting
it “doesn’t fit the values of our country.”
Writer David Steinberg identified 105 news stories written in the
immediate aftermath of Omar’s victory, and not a single one mentioned
that she believed Jewry possessed mind-control abilities or that Israel
was “evil.” No one called on the Democratic Party to distance itself
from this rhetoric.
No one at the partisan Anti-Defamation League, ostensibly tasked with
stopping anti-Jewish libel but in reality busy hyperventilating over
every far-flung right-wing bigot with a handful of supporters, paid her
any attention.
Now, it isn’t inherently anti-Semitic to be critical of Israeli
political leadership or policies. The Democratic Party antagonism toward
the Jewish state has been well-established over the past decade. But
Omar used a well-worn anti-Semitic trope about the preternatural ability
of a nefarious Jewish cabal to deceive the world.
It’s something you would expect to read in the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion or hear from a professor of comparative literature at
Columbia University, not a US congresswoman.
Omar had a chance to retract, or at least refine, her statement.
Instead, she doubled down. “These accusations are without merit,” she
claimed, blaming Jewish Islamophobia for the backlash. “They are rooted
in bigotry toward a belief about what Muslims are stereotyped to
believe.”
To accuse the only democratic state in the Middle East, which grants
more liberal rights to its Muslim citizens than any Arab nation, of
being an “apartheid regime” is, on an intellectual level, grossly
disingenuous or incredibly ignorant. And when a politician singles out
Jewish allies as “evil,” but ignores every brutal theocratic regime in
the area, it’s certainly noteworthy.
Omar even wants the US to normalize relations with the
Holocaust-denying terror-state of Iran. This seems like a fact reporters
might have wanted to shoehorn into one their post-election articles.
Then again, the media has a track record of tenaciously ignoring the
anti-Semitism creeping into Democratic Party politics. The left, recall,
has embraced the Women’s March and its co-founders, Tamika Mallory and
Linda Sarsour, even though they’re both supporters of the Nation of
Islam, which has peddled anti-Jewish conspiracies about wicked Jewish
influence in America.
None of the leaders of the Democratic Party has said anything about
the activist wing pushing these age-old hatreds. We have not heard a
peep from those who see white supremacy behind every border security
measure. There are elections to win, after all. And in the contemporary
liberal establishment, conceived in identity politics, even many Jews
have remained dutifully silent.
In such an environment, members of the Congressional Black Caucus can
maintain a relationship with anti-Semites without any blowback.
Democrats have yet to explain why Maxine Waters and at least four other
House Dems — who’ll all be in leadership positions come January — were
seen on video schmoozing with the leader of the Nation of Islam.
Omar’s defenders will claim she’s anti-Israel, not anti-Jewish.
“Anti-Zionism” has been the preferred justification for Jew-hatred in
institutions of education and within progressive activism for a long
time. Now it’s coming for politics. Democrats can either allow it to be
normalized, or they can remain silent.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist and author of
No comments:
Post a Comment