Oh wait! First, let's call out hatred and hateful statements. Let's pass a resolution!
Wait! we have to revise it: Here comes everybody! Okay! Now, we have it.
Here's the WashPost story...mostly talking about 23 Republicans who voted against an anti-Hate statement! But wait, there are Democrats who think the resolution didn't get its priorities straight. What the Fudge!
The sweepstakes continue: From the New York Times.
If Ms. Pelosi believed she was
smoothing over divisions among Democrats, another member of leadership —
Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the Democratic whip,
gave critics a new cause with an interview....
In it, he was quoted as saying that Ms. Omar, who fled war in her
native Somalia as a child and spent four years in a refugee camp in
Kenya, had more personal experiences with bigotry than those who are
generations removed from the Holocaust, the Japanese internment camps of
World War II and the other violent episodes of the past. “I’m
serious about that,” ....[said Mr. Clyburn] “There
are people who tell me, ‘Well, my parents are Holocaust survivors.’ ‘My
parents did this.’ It’s more personal with her. I’ve talked to her, and
I can tell you she is living through a lot of pain.” [Lee
Zeldin, R-NY] responded, “Whip Clyburn’s comments are disgusting, making light
of the Holocaust and minimizing its massive importance and impact on
victims’ families, survivors, and the world.”
And the winner is....?
UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan weighs in... on the underlying issue.
UPDATE2: E.J. Dionne slices and dices the issue and mostly gets it right for people our age!
UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan weighs in... on the underlying issue.
UPDATE2: E.J. Dionne slices and dices the issue and mostly gets it right for people our age!
Rave on, Margaret.
ReplyDeleteAll I heard Omar saying is that Israel has a lot of power and influence through its lobbying efforts, particularly AIPAC. Conflating that with anti-Semitism strikes me as a stretch.
I also get sick and tired of the National Competition of Who Has Suffered More. Japanese internment was wrong. Jim Crow was wrong. No Irish Need Apply was wrong. Gentiles Only is wrong. Women can't vote is wrong.
And so is basing foreign policy on how much the $$ AIPAC can provide or some dumb-ass reading of Scripture that the state of Israel is part of God's plan for the End Times and so deserves to be nuked up, have preferential treatment, its sins against the Palestinians overlooked.
Margaret, yeah, eye roll here. And what's with all the freshman congress members who have to broadcast their every thought? It's like I used to tell my kids, we have two ears and one mouth for a reason.
ReplyDeleteThe freshmen members who have made the most noise are AOC, Omar, and Tlaib. Is it a coincidence that they are members of groups that Trump has tried to restrict with walls and travel bans? I don't think so.
DeleteI with my mom had told me that we have two ears and one mouth for a reason.
DeleteI WISH....
DeleteI also wish she had told me to read everything five times before hitting "send."
Nobody "hit send" in the 1950s and 1960s. Mothers could only teach you how to put stamps on letters and put them in the postal box.
DeleteI have mentioned before that the Democrats are brain dead. Among the MAGA crowd, the whole conversation today is about how the D's hate the Jews. One of them, whom I called out a couple of weeks ago for saying the Jews run everything, is especially vocal on the subject of Democratic hypocrisy. Speaker Pelosi,I guess, felt it was time to deliver talking points to Fox, since the big losing month in the trade war, the liar Cohen suing the liar Trump Corp. and the lying tax evader Manafort going to jail all might have come to someone's attention if the D's hadn't provided convenient distraction.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, 28 Ds in Congress are Jewish; two Republicans are.
Instead of Omar, Omar, Omar (did she have anything to do with Behghazi), I'd like to hear about Lordstown, Lordstown, Lordstown, but Mr. Trump wouldn't like to hear about that, and the Democrats are too busy turning Omar into another Republican meme.
ReplyDeleteThe posturing and drama make me ill. I don't subscribe to the idea that the Holocaust gives an eternal moral blank check to a country and the actions of its government. And it's not anti-semitic to criticize the policies and actions of that government. One critic is Bernie Sanders. And he is somewhat Jewish.
ReplyDeleteThose of us of a certain age spent much of our youth rooting for Israel out of awareness of the Shoah. We read Elie Wiesel. Coincidentally, Vat II reminded us Catholics of our Jewish roots. I remember literally skipping up Armour Blvd in Kansas City the day it was obvious Israel had won the Six-Day War. Israel carved itself out of an unforgiving desert, and you had to admire that. The carving was done, incidentally, by a bunch of socialists, socialists, socialists.
ReplyDeleteThe younger generation is more aware of an Israel whose public face is the brutish and not too ethical Bibi Netanyahu -- a corporate capitalist, not one of the founding socialists -- and whose policies are to settle on disputed land to make sure there is none for Palestine in the end and to create humanitarian crises among the Palestinians they displace. The leap-to-mind comparison is not to the Exodus (the biblical event, the ship, the movie, the whole thing) but to South Africa's Apartheid. It is not a pleasant view. The truth about Israel is somewhere in between, but if Bibi and Donald John enter prison to start 2020, I personally will not shed a tear.
Thanks for articulating that, Tom. I didn't read Elie Wiesel, but I read Viktor Frankl. And the founder of the company I worked for, for 23 years, was a Holocaust survivor who had dual US and Israeli citizenship. He wrote a book called "Never the Final Journey".
DeleteAgree about Netanyahu and his government. The Andrew Sullivan article Margaret linked made some very good points, including the one that you can criticize Washington's relationship with Israel without employing anti-Semitic language.
Correction: the name of the book was "Never the Last Journey" by Felix Zandman.
DeleteThis dual citizen had no divided loyalty. It was all for Israel.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Ami_Kadish
He got off with a wrist slap. Well, he was spying for Israel and that's ok. I'm not saying Jewish-Americans generally have questionable loyalty. But it happens. My real concern is the divided loyalty of bought off congresspeople, whether by AIPAC or fossil fuel and pharmaceutical companies.
One of the reasons that these accusations of anti-Semitism against Omar have achieved some traction with conservatives is that they are not being considered in isolation.
ReplyDelete* If I'm not mistaken, she has been chastised at least once before for making remarks that were viewed as anti-Semitic
* The NY Women's March had a scandal earlier this year in which some organizers were accused, including by other oeganizers, of being anti-Semitic
* Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britain's Labour Party, the rough equivalent of Democrats in the US, has been accused of anti-Semitic sympathies
Conservatives attempt to take these few separate strands and weave them into a tapestry of liberal anti-Semitism. How successful that weaving is, is certainly open to question. But it's worth noting that these conservative attacks are being pursued on two different fronts: that Omar in particular is anti-Semitic; and that her anti-Semitism is merely a visible manifestation of a larger/deeper issue of anti-Semitism that plagues political liberalism.
One other remark: the accusations against Omar are that she is engaging in "dog whistle" accusations. In other words: when she tweets something like, "It's all about the Benjamins!", that may not raise a red flag with someone like me, who is not Jewish and not especially attuned to layers and degrees of thoughtless and/or malicious anti-Semitism; but to those who are so attuned (certainly including many Jews), that tweet raises red flags.
Finally, there is the fact that she is Muslim, and it is alleged that there is a "Muslim world" that is alive with anti-Semitic tropes. That those tropes exist, cannot be denied. That all Muslims are susceptible to it: that seems like claiming that all white people are, to some degree or another, racist.
The quintessential anti-Semites were in the Nazi Party. The American Nazis, who get their inspiration there, usually gravitate toward conservatives and even get mild applause as good fellas after Charlottesville. So why are we talking about this as a Democratic Party problem?
DeleteWhy? Why? Why? Because the Republicans see it as a great wedge issue, leveraging Jewish-Americans (of a certain age) to their side of the ballot.
DeleteAnd then there's the media hot on cat fights between Democrats and Republicans and between Democrats.
Let's see...what else?
Can criticism of the Israeli government slide into antisemitism. Yes. But that is no reason to be critical of any government. The problem for Jews is that overuse of the Holocaust card by a right wing foreign government that can make or break American politicians will increase real antisemitism.
ReplyDeleteI guess Chris Hedges meets Netanyahu's definition of antisemite. Is this article antisemitic or just factual?
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/israels-stranglehold-on-american-politics/
Thanks for linking the E.J. Dionne article, Margaret. As usual, he gets it.
ReplyDeleteTom Blackburn (above) got the essence of my crack about "people of our age."
ReplyDelete"Those of us of a certain age spent much of our youth rooting for Israel out of awareness of the Shoah. We read Elie Wiesel. Coincidentally, Vat II reminded us Catholics of our Jewish roots. I remember literally skipping up Armour Blvd in Kansas City the day it was obvious Israel had won the Six-Day War. Israel carved itself out of an unforgiving desert, and you had to admire that. The carving was done, incidentally, by a bunch of socialists, socialists, socialists."
What is sad is the treatment of the Palestinians (who are no angels!) as well as disappointing given what was hoped for (the Israelis being no angels either).
The WaPo paywall has finally become impregnable. I have had problems with paywalls. For example, I paid $18 through American Express to read Charles P. Pierce, and can't get in. Two phone calls, two snail mails and five emails have not even produced a "we'll get back to you." Commonweal told me the other day that I don't know my password (generally true; my computer does it for me) and had to change it. When I changed it, Commonweal said there was a problem with the change and kept me out. Bank of America, where all I have is one stinkin' credit card for use at places that don't take Amex, never accepts my password, always makes me get a new password and then rejects that. So I can't use the credits I have built up on my card. Now Medicare wants me to open an on-line account, with password. Huge waste of time there.
ReplyDeleteSo I'll have to wait a couple of days until my local paper runs the Dione column. Just 'splaining.
Tom, this is where I accessed the Dionne article:
Deletehttps://newsok.com/article/5625470/ej-dionne-lets-stay-united-against-bigotry
I can't get into WaPo either.