Democrats and Anti-Semitism
The problem isn’t ‘tropes’ that are ‘hurtful.’ It’s policies that aim to wipe out the only Jewish nation.
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By Abigail Shrier
Feb. 12, 2019 6:45 p.m. ET
Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar at the State of the Union, Feb. 5.
Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar at the State of the Union, Feb. 5. Photo: NurPhoto via Getty Images
The Democrats have an anti-Semitism problem, and it isn’t subtle. Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar tweeted Sunday that congressional support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins baby,” a slang term for $100 bills—a straightforward accusation that American lawmakers who support the Jewish state are being bought off. Who does she think is paying American politicians to be pro-Israel, the Forward’s opinion editor asked. “AIPAC!” Ms. Omar gleefully replied, notwithstanding that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee does not contribute to political campaigns.
House Democratic leaders—though none of the Democrats running for president—quickly condemned Ms. Omar’s smear, saying in a statement that her “use of anti-Semitic tropes and prejudicial accusations about Israel’s supporters” was “hurtful” and “deeply offensive.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said her “anti-Semitic stereotype” was “offensive and irresponsible.”
All true, but beside the point.
That Ms. Omar would slander Israel is disturbing not because of the feelings it tramples. Since her appointment to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, her statement raises alarm about how her enmity for the world’s only Jewish country—and the world’s largest Jewish population—might translate into policy aims. The issues for Israel’s supporters are security and survival, not hurt feelings, which are trivial in comparison. Assuming that all Jews love gefilte fish, play klezmer music, and suffer overbearing mothers? Those are stereotypes. Actively working to isolate Israel and accusing pro-Israel Jews of bribing Congress isn’t “insensitive.” It’s something far darker and more malevolent.
Talk of “tropes” and “stereotypes” betrays the left’s understanding of prejudice, which recognizes no distinction between threats and thoughts. Ms. Omar’s statements require no sophisticated parsing, nor a deep understanding of historical prejudice; real hatred rarely does. Hers is repeated, focused, overt and jubilant. It is bookended with musical notes, as her “all about the Benjamins” tweet was; it ends in an exclamation mark or is stamped with an arm-flex emoji, as was her “apology,” which ran under the defiant heading “Listening and learning, but standing strong,” and read in part: “I unequivocally apologize. At the same time . . .”
There is an air of comeuppance in her persistent design to delegitimize Israel, as when she told Yahoo! News last month that “I almost chuckle” at the idea that Israel is a democracy. Or in her hair-raising proclamation on Twitter , in 2012: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”
Last month, she apologized for this “anti-semitic trope” she “unknowingly used”—as if Jews had a peculiar sensitivity to being accused of using mind control to disguise their evil. It is also unlikely that she meant “Israel” had “hypnotized the world”; Israel has famously few friends on the world stage.
She meant Jews—the people of Israel—a group that can credibly be claimed to hold some political influence in the West. That’s the power to which she objects. They are the people who irk her so much they are already a constant focus of her first weeks of congressional energies.
Among newly prominent Democrats, she is not alone. She and Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan began their time in office by announcing their support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which calls on the world to sever economic and cultural ties with Israel, treating it as a pariah state akin to apartheid South Africa. It doesn’t matter to BDS supporters that Muslim and Arab citizens of Israel enjoy full rights, including representation in the Knesset. For them, it is enough that Jews live on any piece of land to which the Palestinian Arabs claim entitlement. That Jews are native to the land is a detail to overlook, or to deny outright, until these hatemongers decide what to do with them.
Like Ms. Omar, Ms. Tlaib vents toward Israel and Jews an obsessive, focused hostility, which she takes no pains to hide. In 2006 she contributed a column to Louis Farrakhan’s blog. When former CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill echoed Hamas’s language in calling for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea” and defended terrorism against Israeli civilians, Ms. Tlaib praised him for “calling out the oppressive policies of Israel.” Last month, she invited a Hezbollah and Hamas supporter to a private family dinner celebrating her elevation to Congress—a man who has said Israel has no right to exist and called for “Zionist terrorist” Jews to return to Europe. Lest anyone fail to get the message, immediately upon being sworn in, Ms. Tlaib affixed to a map in her office a Post-it Note reading “Palestine” and pointing to Israel.
What does she imagine would happen to the Jews who inhabit the land if Israel were replaced by “Palestine”? Whether she envisions expulsion or genocidal war, the malign intent is unmistakable.
Perhaps we can drop the charade that obsessive hatred of Israel has anything to do with tropes, stereotypes, cultural insensitivity and the like. Such talk permits wrongdoers to claim credibly that they were not aware of a particular Jewish sensitivity. And it makes fools of us all, as lies tend to do.
As long as Democrats continue to condemn anti-Semitism while trivializing its presence within their party, this anti-Semitism is unlikely to subside. Melissa Byrne, a former aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, tweeted of Ms. Omar: “She is a new MoC”—member of Congress—“figuring out how to navigate calling out AIPAC (which is a terrible organization aligned with Bibi).” The soft bigotry of low expectations: Ms. Omar is new here! She didn’t know it was offensive to accuse pro-Israel Jews of graft.
Sometimes hate is just hate. But threats cause alarm because of what they hope to achieve, not because they are hurtful in themselves. Democrats should stop pretending that hatred is a matter of feelings and take Ms. Omar, Ms. Tlaib and their compatriots at their word.
Ms. Shrier is a writer living in Los Angeles.
