by William Skink
I was disappointed to see James Conner piling on the smear campaign against Ilhan Omar. The opening of his recent blog post is rife with accusations unsupported by facts:
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.
Criticizing the influence of AIPAC does not mean Omar “does not like Jews”. Criticizing American politicians who think passing laws that undermine the 1st amendment of our Constitution in order to keep US citizens from boycotting Israel is not slurring the patriotism of those politicians.
If you live in Texas and don’t like the idea of billions and billions of your taxpayer dollars going to a government that executes unarmed children, medics and journalists, then your first amendment right to boycott that government no longer exists. How is that not putting loyalty to a foreign country ahead of loyalty to the constitutional laws of THIS country?
Accurately describing reality is not Anti-Semitism and Democrats don’t have an Anti-Semitism problem, the state of Israel has a racism/war crime problem.
Just last month UN investigators took a tentative step in acknowledging the intentional targeting by Israeli snipers of unarmed protestors. Why isn’t there more outrage over children and journalists being shot and killed by Israeli snipers?
UN investigators have accused Israeli soldiers of intentionally firing on civilians and said they may have committed war crimes in their lethal response to Palestinian demonstrations in Gaza.
The independent Commission of Inquiry, set up last year by the UN’s human rights council, said Israeli forces killed 189 people and shot more than 6,100 others with live ammunition near the fence that divides the two territories.
The panel said in a statement that it had found “reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot at journalists, health workers, children and persons with disabilities, knowing they were clearly recognisable as such”.
Why is there no significant outrage and/or legislative condemnation of Israel for what it’s doing to Palestinians? If I say American politicians are too afraid of the type of immediate smear campaign Omar is experiencing, does that also make me an Anti-Semitic?
To further make his case that Democrats have an Anti-Semitism problem Conner has to go back more than 3 decades to 1984, when then-candidate Jesse Jackson referred to New York as Hymietown. I fail to see how Jackson + Omar = Democrat problem with Anti-Semitism in 2019.
James, I respect your independent-minded inclinations and tendency to avoid herd-thinking around issues like identity politics, but in this case I think you are dangerously conflating legitimate criticism with Anti-Semitism.
If Ilhan Omar should be considered an Anti-Semite for criticizing the influence of AIPAC and Anti-BDS legislation passed in states like Texas, then so should I.