Congressional Representative Ilhan Omar, A Semite
My new Congressional Representative likes to use Facebook to inform her constituents of what she is doing in the House. I do engage in Facebook and probably shouldn’t do so. Facebook is too much of a waste of time and it is filled with advertising and silliness. Then too, I like knowing what our Rep is doing so I use Facebook. I also connect with various people I hope to keep in contact with as their status allows me to input my thoughts and ideas. Here is what my Congressional Representative had to say:
“I would like to make the following statement regarding Rep. Omar’s comments of Feb. 10. Her comments traffic in age-old stereotypes and anti-Semitic bias, drag down public conversation, and are counter to our fundamental values of religious freedom and mutual respect – the very values that led to Rep. Omar’s historic election last year. While I recognize Rep. Omar’s apology for her comments, I call upon her to strictly avoid anti-Semitic speech, particularly when violent anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise, as we saw in the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue. Elected officials must lead by example, particularly now, and carry out their responsibility to unite rather than divide the American public.”
Well ok and she joined a chorus of others including Pelosi, McCarthy, Trump, and the other female Semite in the House. Seeing it was safe to bash Omar and not have anyone take issue, Pence joined the crowd yesterday. For Ilhan Omar, its gotta be a lonely life when you screw up, do not make your point clear enough, the sharks with which you hang with come in to feed off of your wounds, and everyone starts to call you an anti-Semite.
A little history: anti-Semitism was coined in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr to designate the anti-Jewish campaigns under way in central Europe then. The term has a broad and extensive usage which is a misnomer since it implies a discrimination against all Semites of which Arabs and other peoples may also be Semites. Yet other peoples identified are not the targets of anti-Semitism as it is usually understood today. The term is inappropriate as a label for the anti-Jewish prejudices, statements, or actions of Arabs or other Semites.
Others may take exception with my definition or citation above. I am fine with it and am going to move along in my complaint. In his editorial “Representative Ilhan Omar is Not Anti-Semitic (So Says this Jew)” Political Writer for “Paste Magazine” Jacob Weindling starts off: “First off, Representative Omar is a Semite. Secondly, even if the people claiming that Omar is being anti-Semitic in the anti-Jewish sense are right (which again, they’re not), equating AIPAC with ‘all Jews’ is being FAR more anti-Semitic than what these folks claim Omar is asserting.
It all began with a tweet that admittedly was far too vague, and for a certain kind of person who looks at Omar’s hijab and thinks of anti-Semitism (again, she’s a Semite, just like me), or simply someone who isn’t plugged in to the day-to-day political madness, this looks like it could be another George Soros-type ‘Jews control the world’ conspiracy.
GOP House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, who published anti-Semitic memes after George Soros received a pipe bomb in the mail, decided that he was done being an anti-Semite who ginned up support from the anti-Semites in the GOP, and was now an anti-Semite who virtue signals towards the Very Serious People in our nation’s capital to gain their support. Luckily for him, this kind of anti-Semitism is tolerated in our nation’s capital, and he has bent the Democratic Party to his will.
Omar quickly corrected her sole error of vagueness, and specifically identified who she was talking about when she insinuated that a political leader was taking money to advance an agenda.”
In this case Ilhan Omar called out the Israeli PAC “AIPAC!.” As Jacob further explains: “AIPAC is the Israel lobby in Washington D.C. To add to this, there is a difference between Israelis American Jews. This basic nuance is completely lost on much of major media, many of whom echoed McCarthy’s false charges of anti-Semitism, favoring the vagueness of Representative Omar’s first tweet over the specificity of her second one. As a Jew, this kind of stuff is so much more hurtful than the traditional stereotype that Omar is falsely accused of perpetuating:
The first-term Democrat suggests GOP support for Israel is fueled by campaign donations.
Jacob adds . . . AIPAC does not represent most Jews. Eighty-five percent of Israelis supported Trump moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, while just 46% of American Jews did. This hurtful conflation of two very different things reduces people like me to caricatures of whatever AIPAC wants, as if all Jews are united on the topic of Israel. We’re not—far from it. We are very divided and it is frankly, exhausting. I didn’t even want to write this column even though I knew I had to. Jews in Israel are different from Jews in America the same way anyone in Israel is different from anyone in America.
I can’t believe I even need to type those words, but the constant stream of bad-faith attacks on Omar from major power brokers in both the political and media establishment demonstrates an extremely narrow—D.C.-centric—view of the world. I’d bet half the people in our nation’s capital arguing that Omar committed some unforgivable sin haven’t been west of Philadelphia or south of D.C. since the 20th century.”
The rest you can read for yourself the balance of what Jacob has to say at Paste Magazine under his title; “Representative Ilhan Omar is Not Anti-Semitic (So Says this Jew).” Of interest might be Jacob’s comments on Chelsea Clinton’s opinion and the other side’s opinion by Batya Ungar-Sargon who Jacob finds falsely characterizing what AIPAC does.
And if I am wrong in my thoughts? There are enough learned people such as Barkley Rosser, Robert Waldman, Mike Kimel, and Dan who can critique my thoughts. I do place value in having a mix of Congressional Representative from different cultures, races, and genders. The country is evolving and has changed much since my ancestors arrived at the Rock.
Amen. I thought she was inappropriately pressured to apologize.
likewise, Jack. i was upset by the Dem reaction and began following Omar because she was right in the first place…
one can point out the influence of bankster money or pharma money in Congress, but mention the influence of Jewish money and you’re attacked as if you’re the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler..
rjs:
Like I have said, Dems eat their own whether living or dead. I posted to my Congressional Representative’s site on this issue as she was of the same ilk in calling out Omar. She knows who I am. Quite a few people agree with Jacob’s article in that much of this call out of Omar is wrong headedness. She was not clear in her discussion. As Jacob has stated Israelis are far different than American Jews and the later majority disagrees with what they are doing. Chelsea blew it in her remarks too. A lot of ignorance going on here.
Actually, it’s not “Jewish money” as she pointed out; it’s AIPAC money and, she didn’t say but could have, Christian fundamentalist money. A substantial number of American jews do not support Israeli policies toward Palestiniians and there is significant opposition in Israel as well.
Correct on the money. And a number of Jews do disagree on AIPAC and with Israelis. You still in Florida?
Not yet. End of February.
You missed a bad storm a week ago and the severe temperature too.
Since Run has invoked me, well, I shall throw a few cents in. He is right to note that “anti-Semite” is misleading when applied to Arabs as they are Semites. However, Omar is of Somali origin, and they are Hamites, not Semites, close, but not the banana. As it is, I know a very cranky old Virginia male WASP who smi-jokingly declares himself to be an anti-Semite because he supposedly does not like either Jews or Arabs.
Anyway, I think you are right that a more accurate label should be used. The attitudes of people like Hilter are more accurately described as being “anti_Jewish.” The problem, of course, is that Netanyahu and AIPAC describe almost anybody who criticizes his policies in Israel as being anti-Semitic or more accurately, anti-Jewish.
But let me almost Talmudically note a lot of precise terms that can overlap, but do not mean the same thing: anti-Netanyahu, anti-Netanyahu government policies, anti-AIPAC, anti-Zionist, anti-Isael, anti-Semitic, anti-Judaic, anti-Jewish. Again, Netanyahu and allies want to conflate anybody showing one of the first two or three with the that final one.
So, one can be anti-Netanyahu while still supporting his government’s policies, which his what AIPAC spends most of its time doing. He is corrupt, and there are many in his own government who would like to see him removed from office and replaced with somebody else, although somebody who would continue to pursue his policies, or possibly even harsher ones.
As it is, apparently a majority of American Jews do not fully support Netanyahu’s policies, but consider themselves to be pro-Israel. They would like a different government with more reasonable policies.
The relation between being anti-Zionist and anti-Israel is complicated, with some definite overlap. Zionism was/is indeed the founding doctrine/raison d’etre of Israel. But now that Israel has existed for over 70 years, one may support its continued existence and hope that it is not attacked, while nevertheless questioning the original Zionist doctrine. But, again, there is a lot of overlap on these.
Anti-Semitic has already been discussed.
Which brings us to anti-Judaic versus anti-Jewish. The first is clearly religious while the latter is ethnic. So an anti-Judaic Christian might dislike people who follow the Jeduaic religion because it is not Chrisitnity, but might be fine with Jews who convert to Christianity. The anti-Jewish person does not care that a Jew has become “for Jesus,” they are still a Jew and thus bad. This was Hitler’s virew.
Indeed, there are people who are pro-Judaic while anti-Jewish. I am thinking of lots of these fundamentalist “Chrisitan Zionists” who are all keen on moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and support Netanyahu’s policies, although when the Second Coming comes, those Israeli Jews had better convert. But they do not like George Soros or Jews in their home towns who are liberal Democrats and not as keen on Netanyahu’s policies as they are.
Thanks Barkley:
Ham the son of Noah didn’t qualify I take it? Yes, a more accurate depiction should be used and the. Nazis/Hitler added biological characteristics to their version of anti-Semitism in so much as a person could have converted or their parents converted and still would be classified as a Jew. From what I have read, a book was developed by the Nazis documenting Jewish physical characteristics in pictures. One picture used a Jewish baby by mistake to represent an Aryan baby.
To wit, I was following what the author , a Jew, of the article had stated as a guide and what family friends had said. It is good to have you around Barkley and thank you for adding to the commentary. If you get to Detroit or Chicago, let me know.
One more thing, are you sure I did not provoke you? 🙂
Run,
You are welcome.
Regarding the Hamites, well, the traditional view was that the three sons of Noah fathered the three main races of humanity. So Shem was not just the ancestor of Jews and Arabs but badically all white people, including all those Christian Europeans. Japheth was the father of the East Asians. Ham fathered Africans, which became the Biblical basis used by racist US southern ministers to justify enslaving Africans. As supposed descendants of Ham, they were supposed to be subject to the Curse of Ham, who supposedly failed to cover his father when Noah was drunk, this somehow being somehow worthy of condemning millions of descendants to all sorts of punishment forever, including slavery.
The current use of the terms “Semite” anf “Hamite” are basicaally linguistic. There are Semitic languages, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, and then there are Hamitic languages, which include ancient Egyptian Coptic along with languages spoken in Ethiopia and Somalia, the most important of the latter being Cushitic, and I think that the Berber language is also Hamitic. Now it turns out that the Semitic group and Hamitic group of languages are not too far apart, and most linguists put them together into a larger Hamito-Semitic group of languages, parallel to the Indo-European languages, with this split between the Hamitic and Semitic ones being sort of llke the split among the Indo-European (or Aryan) ones between an eastern group, those descended from ancient Persian and those descended fro Sanskrit, and a western group, which is all the rest, the Celtic, Latinic, Germanic, Slavic, Greeek, Albanian, and Armenian (although the latter may be part of the eastern part).
Note that most Africans speak languages that are part of the broad Bantu group, which is not part of either of those groups, althouf some of the sub-Saharan Bantu languaes have some loan words from some of the Hamitic languages.
Anyway, Cong. Omar is a Hamite according to the modern linguistic definition, given her Somali ethnicity, although i do not know precisely which group out of Somalia that she belongs to.
run, I was here to enjoy the ice, snow, and polar vortex. We go to Florida end of this month.
Jack:
Good for you. Should be back down at Loyola in March. Enjoy the nice weather . . .