Posted on 02/14/2019 5:26:30 AM PST by SJackson
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) participates in a news conference at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, Feb. 7, 2019. Photo: Reuters / Jonathan Ernst / Files.
Antisemitic sentiments and incidents continue to rise worldwide, particularly in the West. Sometimes this form of bigotry is perpetrated by far-right elements, other times at the hands of far-leftists and Islamists. It is rare to see both extremes unite for any cause except for their mutual disdain for Israel or Jews. It is even rarer to see them applaud and defend an American politician.
But that is exactly what’s happening as Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s anti-Jewish tropes receive widespread praise from both US-based Islamists and white supremacists.
Criticism and condemnation rained down on Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, on Monday, after she tweeted, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby” to explain why she and fellow Democrat Rashida Tlaib draw attention for their “criticisms of Israel.”
Who is the source of this popular reference to cash? “AIPAC!” Omar added, referring to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Facing serious backlash from many in her party, Omar issued a caveated apology. “My intention is never to offend my constituents of Jewish Americans as a whole. … This is why I unequivocally apologize,” she wrote before qualifying that she has an issue with “lobbyists in our politics” such as AIPAC.
Omar’s views are hypocritical given that she received almost $60,000 from political action committees and lobbyists, including $5,000 from CAIR-California in 2018.
On Wednesday, CNN‘s Manu Raju reported that Omar was curt and sarcastic in response to his questions on her initial comments. Omar answered, “Are you serious?” to one of Raju’s questions and then she said: “Yes I tweeted, and there’s a response. You can run that. Have a nice day.”
Omar either seems unaware of how offensive her initial comments are, or she comes off as insincere in her apology. She has also remained silent while people have tried to raise money for her 2020 re-election campaign as an act of defiance against the criticism she is receiving.
Further undermining the sincerity of her apology, she has said nothing to correct those who insist she did nothing wrong.
Many people have tried to defend Omar. Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who sees Israel as “an apartheid, rogue, terrorist state,” started the controversy by saying that Omar and Tlaib were being singled out for criticism because “US political leaders … [were] defending a foreign nation even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans.”
Omar’s “all about the Benjamins” response implied Jewish money was the driving factor. Greenwald condemned House Democratic leaders as “craven, cowardly” and said their reaction proved his point: “So a young, exciting, dynamic immigrant – the first black Muslim woman ever elected to Congress – is denounced by her own Party’s leadership less than a month after she arrives in DC, due to her criticisms of AIPAC & Israel,” he wrote. “Does this say anything about the power dynamic in DC?”
But the strongest defense of Omar comes from US-based Islamist groups and leaders.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), for example, issued a statement on Monday acknowledging that antisemitism is real, but that Omar hasn’t engaged in it. Supporters of Israel, according to CAIR, are the real problem. “CAIR applauds Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib for their courage in speaking the truth about Israel’s racial, religious and ethnic segregation. Agenda-driven groups — like AIPAC — have for decades enabled that segregation and the resulting denial of human rights for Christian and Muslim Palestinians.”
CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad thanked Omar and Tlaib for their “courageous and principled stance” against the “Israeli Lobby.” Awad has deep connections to a US-based Hamas support network that operated during the 1990s. The “Palestine Committee” umbrella included the Islamic Association for Palestine, where Awad worked before creating CAIR. And Awad appeared on Palestine Committee rosters and meetings. When CAIR was formed in 1994, the same year Awad publicly endorsed Hamas, it was immediately added to the Palestine Committee.
CAIR’s leadership appears to forget that they run an “agenda-driven group” devoted to whitewashing Hamas and other terrorist activity against Israel. Furthermore, CAIR leaders praise Islamist regimes like Recep Tayyip’s Erdogan’s Turkey, which earned the distinction of being the world’s top jailer of journalists.
On Tuesday, activist Ahmed Bedier, former executive director of CAIR’s Tampa chapter, tweeted that the “far right is targeting” Omar in response to a Politico story.
Linda Sarsour, co-chair of the national Women’s March, also chimed in on Tuesday, tweeting that the “end goal of the right is to marginalize prominent voices who dare speak up for Palestinians,” adding, “We need to resist this.” Sarsour has her own long record of antisemitism, including blasting any attempts of interfaith dialogue or civic cooperation that include “Zionists.”
Yet Sarsour promotes a conspiracy theory, the Investigative Project on Terrorism exclusively exposed last September, saying that Jews are responsible for American police shootings of unarmed black people because of a leadership training program in Israel. She has never apologized for the smear.
Democratic leaders unequivocally rejected Omar’s comments as antisemitic in a statement on Monday.
“We are and will always be strong supporters of Israel in Congress because we understand that our support is based on shared values and strategic interests,” their statement said. “Legitimate criticism of Israel’s policies is protected by the values of free speech and democratic debate that the United States and Israel share. But Congresswoman Omar’s use of anti-Semitic tropes and prejudicial accusations about Israel’s supporters is deeply offensive.”
To Sarsour and others, however, Omar did nothing wrong. In fact, she is the victim.
“I will not be silent in the face of attacks, harassment and targeted policing of speech from a Black Muslim woman elected official, our sister Ilhan Omar in the name of combatting antisemitism,” Sarsour wrote on Facebook. “We can stand up for Ilhan knowing her record and what she stands for and also combat antisemitism.”
But Omar’s record includes a 2012 complaint that Israel “hypnotized the world,” and a prayer that “Allah [would] awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”
Prominent American Islamists Esam Omeish and Hassan Shibly shared Linda Sarsour’s Facebook post on Monday blasting AIPAC. Omeish, who praised Palestinians in a 2000 speech for deciding that the “Jihad way is the way to liberate your land” and lauded Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, tells his followers to “STAND WITH ILHAN.”
Shibly runs CAIR’s office in Tampa. As a college student, he said that Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah is “absolutely not a terrorist organization, and any war against them is illegitimate.” He has also repeatedly accused the FBI of entrapping innocent Muslims and even of cold-blooded murder.
The latest addition to Omar’s public defense comes from Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, which “expresses our solidarity with Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), targeted for racist anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and fundamentally anti-Palestinian attacks.” Al-Awda called the immediate backlash to Omar’s comments “an attempt to silence, marginalize and suppress criticism of Israel and support for the Palestinian people’s fundamental rights to self-determination, national liberation and return.”
This coalition, like other Islamist groups, unabashedly supports efforts to eliminate the Jewish state of Israel by advocating for Palestinian refugees and their descendants to “return” to Israel and erode the country’s Jewish majority.
Similarly, Samidoun, a Palestinian prisoner’s advocacy group, hailed Omar for her BDS support and “urges a broad mobilization to defend her against media and political incitement by Israel and its allies.”
In 2017, Samidoun organized a seminar celebrating the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)’s 50th anniversary. The PFLP is responsible for numerous terrorist attacks targeting Israeli civilians. Among them is the 1969 bombing of a Jerusalem grocery store that killed two college students. Samidoun championed the cause of the ’69 bombing plotter Rasmea Odeh when she was prosecuted for naturalization fraud.
But US Islamists are not the only ones defending Omar. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke also backed Omar’s assessment when responding to former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley’s rebuke of Omar.
“So, let us get this straight. It is ‘Anti-Semitism’ to point out that the most powerful political moneybags in American politics are Zionists who put another nation’s interest (israel’s) over that of America ??????” Duke tweeted on Monday.
Helping their Islamist allies, the far-left organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) launched a website and campaign called “#IStandWithIlhan.” JVP pushes the BDS campaign that seeks to isolate Israel politically and economically.
During her primary campaign, Omar claimed that she didn’t support the BDS movement because it would not help bring about a peaceful, two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She quickly reversed herself after winning election to Congress.
Even Omar’s defenders qualify her initial response to the current controversy as an “I’m sorry that you were offended” type of apology.
Last year, concerned leaders from Minneapolis’ Jewish community hosted a type of “anti-Semitic intervention of Omar” as a result of her previous comments.
But Omar’s antisemitic statements linking support for Israel to Jewish money, along with her somewhat disdainful reaction to questions, clearly show that Omar failed to learn how to express herself without invoking antisemitic tropes. She can prove us wrong by repudiating those who “#StandWithIlhan.”
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No, she won't.
Spectator printed a Satire piece on her while on the next page an article asks why she should apologize when she speaks the truth.
They are coming ‘out’ so to speak. You cannot shame them when they have no conscience concerning Anti-Semitism.
Omar is a foreign agent who has hoodwinked her constituents into electing her.
She is pure taquiya, a woman bent on the destruction of anyone who stands in her way to destroy the government institutions she touches. She will leave a pile of broken and even dead bodies where-ever she goes as an agent of the foreign relations committee, an Islamic leaker of secret information to the Musl;im Brotherhood, ISIS and the Taliban.
If she keeps it up. maybe she will find her rightful place among the martyrs of Islam she now holds so dear.
Alahwahoo Whackbar!
I issue a fatwa against Omar who is an infidel to our Constitution and American Patriotism!Whack her good!
Down with the Great Satan of Somalia and Iran!Down with Omar!
(I reckon I have spoken enough Minneapolis immigrant talk
right back at Omar and their treasonous constituents. I have many more installments!)
Whackbar Omar!
IMO this person is one big trial balloon to see what happens and what Americans will tolerate.
The public has been fed pure hatred by the major media for a long time, very similar to how Nazi Germany used Jews to focus the hatred of the masses. The more accustomed to it they get, the more unquestioned authority they will delegate to the government.
Remember Charleston and not disavowing enough?
I'm not sure what "far-right" or even "right" means to journalists and to those writers who pretend it has a clear meaning, beyond "Orange man bad" and "right wing bad"; the definitions are so twisted that they have become useless:
"Generally, the left-wing is characterized by an emphasis on 'ideas such as freedom, equality, fraternity, rights, progress, reform and internationalism', while the right-wing is characterized by an emphasis on 'notions such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction and nationalism'."[From the biased description at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_spectrum ]
In reality, today's conservatism is the philosophy of freedom, equal opportunity, rights, duty, tradition, independence, and positive progress. Today's liberalism is the philosophy of enforced equal outcomes, globalism, dependency, the tribalism/factionalism of identity politics, and intrusive/authoritarian government.
I usually appreciate Steve Emerson's work, but he leads with far-right as anti-semitic and then adds far-leftists and Islamists setting the impression that it's on the right where most of the anti-semitism stems. Yet, his article goes through some nine or ten different far-left or Islamist figures or groups before getting to the single and brief mention of David Duke. The order in which you list things matters especially when you make them equivalent, and I find Emerson's equivalence and order more than a little troubling.
I’m in a state of shock and dread about all of this radical Islamic, leftist, environmental, liberal rapid rise. Not that I wasn’t aware of the potential for all of this to occur but the reaction of so many idiots supporting these moronic “ leaders”. I have analysed the whole crazy situation and I’m sure like many people that some kind of civil conflict is looming. And I say that with hope because it’s the only way this country will be saved. All of this negotiations and “ compromise” just gives these craven commies time to further erode our liberties.
I agree. Why is Emerson trying to lump that racist POS Duke with grassroots and mainstream conservatism to make his point about anti-Semitism? Our side has denounced David Duke numerous times and he’s out on the periphery on his own! Omar represents mainstream Democrat thinking when it comes to Israel, and San Fran Nan has many others who are just like Omar among the RATs in the House! They’re just silent about their Jew hate unlike Omar who is open about it! The problem for the RATs is that many of their far left voters share anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiments too. Let’s be honest. They’re the Jew hating political party in this country today!
The left hates Israel and Jews. They will never back down from their hatred.
She hasn't hoodwinked her constituents. Her constituents are just like her, from Somali. Have you been to Minneapolis or various areas of Minnesota in the past decade?
Omar lied to get the Jewish vote by saying she did not support BDS. Omar denied being a Jew hater, even though her own words proved otherwise. All of this was known to her Jewish constituents prior to the election. Nevertheless many voted for her. Now her anti-semitism is again on full display and her Islamist and Leftist support groups have rallied to her defense. Despite this, I suspect the Jews in her District will support her in the next election. I wonder when they will learn? Perhaps they should read about the Berlin Jews as they watched the rise of the Nazi Party. Despite Hitler’s own words, they never believed anything bad would happen to them — after all they were loyal Germans.
David Duke supports her, too.
And they call us Nazis. Somebody needs to read a book about WWII. It was the Nazis trying to destroy the Jews.
She hasn’t hoodwinked her constituents. Her constituents are just like her, from Somali. Have you been to Minneapolis or various areas of Minnesota in the past decade?
Lived in the state on and off for 15+ years. At first the Hmong migrated to the area. They are basically Cambodians who came their with church backing, set up their own section to live in and produced for the economy.
Then it changed and the Somalis came as it was openly known as a welfare type state, that had “ open value” systems re immigrants....
Lots of good people there , but suffers from the same big city liberal thinking found on the coasts....
Also Bi Racial couples prevalent in the early 70’s. The trend started earlier there due to “ tolerance ?
Also remember, Al Franken , Jesse Ventura elected to govt positions. One a former comedian, the other a pro wrestler....
Ventura former talk show host on local air....
You are correct, so many big cities have fallen off the edge of critical thinking, or just thinking. Seattle has it's own little Mogadishu as well as other cities. Creeping sharia.
have been through the Minn/St Paul airport (I refer to it as Little Mogadishu airport)
Good one.
Re cities falling off the edge, this is why we have reps like her , and also AOC who give that feel good vibe to the unknowing, and preach happy days, but at their core are all about destroying individuality in favor the the caliphate or big government...
Electing Jug Ears paved the way for these impostors to achieve these roles...
Gee, thanks Minnesota....brilliant choice........sigh
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