Criticism or Anti-Semitism<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about the Benjamin\u2019s Baby!! <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tweet from Congresswoman Ilhan Omar in response to Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy\u2019s criticism of her stand about Palestinians and Israel<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Ilhan Omar, newly elected Representative to Congress from Minnesota, is a Muslim woman originally born in Somalia. She has been highly critical of Israel\u2019s policy on Palestinians. Her tweet above, implying that Israel\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In full disclosure, my father was Jewish and my mother Catholic.\u00a0\u00a0I was raised in the Episcopal Church (as close as Mom could get to Catholicism) but also surrounded with Jewish family and friends.\u00a0\u00a0I was also raised to support Israel and Zionism, taking my view in part from Leon Uris\u2019s book\u00a0Exodus.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In college in the 1970\u2019s 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\u2019s founding; used by both sides as \u201cthe cause\u201d 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u201ctwo-state solution\u201d with a Palestinian and Israeli nation co-existing, was the foundation of US policy in the Middle East since President Jimmy Carter got Israel\u2019s Begin to shake hands with Egypt\u2019s Sadat at Camp David.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u201cJews and money,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of Prime Minister\u2019s Netanyahu\u2019s 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\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So while I recognize the ethnic insensitivity in Omar\u2019s 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 \u201canti-Semitic\u201d force. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Israel is the only democracy existing in the Middle East, and the United States and Israel are powerful friends. But friendship doesn\u2019t 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 \u201csurvival\u201d is right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u201cknow better\u201d than the imagery she created in her tweet, but Americans should be able to question the policies of the Netanyahu\u2019s administration without being trolled as anti-Semitic. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"