In an interview on CNN last week, the newly elected Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar was given a chance to distance herself from her tweet, sent during the 2012 Israel-Hamas war, that read: “Israel has hypnotized the world; may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” Instead, Omar pled ignorance as to why such words—which, as Bari Weiss points out, play on one of the oldest and most persistent anti-Semitic tropes—would disturb American Jews. Weiss adds:
During the weeklong November 2012 war, which began when Hamas fired roughly 100 rockets at civilian targets, Israel “hypnotized” nobody. It was subject to the usual barrage of intense criticism in the news media and at the United Nations, and from the leaders of other nations, not to mention protesters across the world. That Israel continues to retain support in the United States among mainstream Democrats and Republicans is because—contrary to Omar’s tweet—the Jewish state is not engaged in “evil doings” but defending itself against the enemies pressing on all of its borders, including Hamas, which has genocide of the Jews, and a belief in Jewish manipulative power, at the heart of its ideology. . . .
The particular challenge [in Omar’s case] is that she is exactly the kind of politician a vast majority of American Jews, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic and who have long aligned themselves with liberal causes, want to celebrate: here is a refugee, a mother, a Muslim, and a woman of color—the first woman of color to represent Minnesota in Congress. It’s no wonder she has already landed on the cover of Time magazine and in front of Annie Leibowitz’s camera. Who wouldn’t want to cheer her on?
Indeed, her identity seems to have fogged the minds of some Jewish commentators, who have insisted that we ought not criticize Omar and other people of color who have recently exposed their anti-Semitism (Tamika Mallory, Marc Lamont Hill) because, well, it’s just not a good look to be criticizing leaders of the black community right now.
This is an untenable position, especially at a moment when the FBI is sounding the alarm about the spike in hate crimes against Jews. Omar now sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where she’ll represent a growing intellectual climate that sees Jews as bearers both of monstrous moral guilt and of the secret power to conceal it.
Yesterday, responding in part to Weiss’s column, Omar apologized for her 2012 tweet and acknowledged its anti-Semitic overtones. Whether she will likewise back down from her support for the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (BDS), or from her convictions about Israel’s “evil doings,” remains to be seen.
Read more on New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/opinion/ilhan-omar-israel-jews.html