Criticism or Anti-Semitism
“It’s all about the Benjamin’s Baby!!
Tweet from Congresswoman Ilhan Omar in response to Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s criticism of her stand about Palestinians and Israel
Ilhan Omar, newly elected Representative to Congress from Minnesota, is a Muslim woman originally born in Somalia. She has been highly critical of Israel’s policy on Palestinians. Her tweet above, implying that Israel’s Republican backers in the US are getting paid off, raised a firestorm. Both Democrats and Republicans condemned her for using anti-Semitic imagery: Jews and money.
In full disclosure, my father was Jewish and my mother Catholic. I was raised in the Episcopal Church (as close as Mom could get to Catholicism) but also surrounded with Jewish family and friends. I was also raised to support Israel and Zionism, taking my view in part from Leon Uris’s book Exodus. I saw the founding of Israel as a heroic struggle of a people to regain their ancestral homeland, and of literally making gardens out of desert.
In college in the 1970’s I continued to study the Middle East, and developed a more nuanced view of history. The emergence of world terrorism, from the Munich Olympic massacre to airplane hijackings and bombing attacks; made me look more closely at the fate of the Palestinians. They were the political pawns in Israel’s founding; used by both sides as “the cause” for attacks and wars. Of any ethnic group in the Middle East, they had the least control over their own destiny. Their terrorist acts were (and are) morally abhorrent, but, were also a foreseeable outcome of their political helplessness.
The United States has been a strong backer of Israel throughout my lifetime, and continues to be. Israel however, has altered its view of Palestinians. The “two-state solution” with a Palestinian and Israeli nation co-existing, was the foundation of US policy in the Middle East since President Jimmy Carter got Israel’s Begin to shake hands with Egypt’s Sadat at Camp David.
But, the current leader of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, seems more interested in containing and controlling Palestinians rather than establishing a dual state. The Palestinians also have become even more radicalized, and Israeli responses to Palestinian actions have often been brutal and inhumane.
Here in the United States, our politics have allowed criticism of Israel to be considered anti-Semitic. Omar blamed the money pro-Israeli sources are donating to American politicians for causing their attacks on her. There is the anti-Semitic image of “Jews and money,” one that Congresswoman Omar accidently or intentionally invoked in her tweet. But there is also the reality that Israel is using their US supporters to finance those politicians that give them support.
Netanyahu is well aware of the machinations of American politics. Born in Israel, he went to high school in Philadelphia, and returned after Israeli military service to get his college education at MIT. He was later the Israeli ambassador to the US, and friends with Mitt Romney and President Trump’s father.
One of Prime Minister’s Netanyahu’s sponsors in the United States is Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who is also a prime supporter of President Trump. Adelson put over $100 million into the GOP 2018 election campaign. The pro-Israeli lobbying group, the American-Israel Policy Committee (AIPAC) can’t donate directly to politicians, but spent $3.5 million lobbying for current Israeli policy. Pro-Israeli donations to politicians go to both sides of the aisle, with Democrats getting more than half.
So while I recognize the ethnic insensitivity in Omar’s tweets, I can also recognize that the lobbying forces backing Israel are unrelenting, leaving little room for discussion about the policies of their government. Criticism is met with “anti-Semitic” force.
Israel is the only democracy existing in the Middle East, and the United States and Israel are powerful friends. But friendship doesn’t mean unflinching support of every action. Friends sometimes have to tell friends hard news, something that President Obama was willing to do with Israel. Not every criticism of Israeli policy can be tossed as anti-Semitic, and not everything Israel does under the umbrella of “survival” is right.
We have become a political world of absolutes and tweets. There is little space for a nuanced view of the world; if someone criticizes Israel, or supports Palestinians, then they are immediately attacked. Congresswoman Omar should “know better” than the imagery she created in her tweet, but Americans should be able to question the policies of the Netanyahu’s administration without being trolled as anti-Semitic.
