Our grandson Henry and Jessica, his lovely girlfriend at Tybee
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Stella The Brit
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Why are liberal Jews still covering for Ilhan Omar?
The latest trolling of the Jews by the Minnesota congresswoman exposes the failure of many Jewish groups and Democrats to prioritize the fight against anti-Semitism over their partisan affiliations.
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN
(July 1, 2021 / JNS) The interesting thing about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) isn’t that she can’t stop trolling American Jews, the pro-Israel community and even her Jewish colleagues in the House Democratic caucus. Omar has demonstrated again and again that she is a dedicated ideologue who is committed to anti-Zionist politics and never shy about employing anti-Semitic tropes to advance that cause.
The really interesting thing about her is why so many liberal Jews, Jewish organizations and even Jewish members of Congress are not only afraid to stand up to her, but often bend over backwards to rationalize or justify her outrageous behavior. Yet this explains a great deal about how a largely dysfunctional organized Jewish world has failed to respond effectively to a surge of anti-Semitism emanating from the left-wing of the Democratic Party.
Every new instance of Omar’s trolling of the Jews follows a familiar pattern.
She generates outrage by saying something offensive, seems to retreat when she gets push back, but then almost immediately turns around and doubles down on her original comments and then counter-attacks, depicting herself as a victim and anyone who had the temerity to criticize her as a racist, an Islamophobe and an opponent of “justice.” She then reaps the rewards of adulation from the leftist base of the Democratic Party and its cheering section in the mainstream media and popular culture.
That was what happened back in 2019 when, upon entering Congress as one of the four members of the radical leftist “Squad,” she said Jews were buying congressional support for Israel (“it’s all about the Benjamins”). That was a double-pronged attack aimed at delegitimizing the pro-Israel community and fellow members of Congress — both Jewish and non-Jewish — for supposedly selling their votes for Jewish money.
It played out this way again only weeks ago when, after falsely denouncing Israeli measures of self-defense against Hamas terrorism and damning it as an “apartheid state,” she went on to make a specious comparison between both Israel and the United States to Palestinian terrorists and the Taliban. After receiving criticism, including from a dozen Jewish Democrats who called on her to “clarify” remarks without actually condemning her, she appeared to back down saying she had been taken out of context, giving Democratic leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi the opening needed to declare the controversy over. But then in almost the same breath, Omar denounced those who had sought to call her to account as bigots and was strongly defended by the House Progressive Caucus and others on the left who were no more offended by her appalling comments than they are by her support for the anti-Semitic BDS movement.
Yet given an opportunity to try to conciliate her critics when asked about the most recent dustup in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, Omar did the opposite. She denounced the 12 Jewish Democrats who took a stand against her as people who are not “seeking justice around the world.”
That she considers her support for Hamas’ war to eliminate the one Jewish state on the planet as a fight for “justice,” is a form of gaslighting. But one has to admire the clever way she always seeks to put liberal Jews on the wrong foot by accusing them of being insufficiently loyal to the social justice agenda that is at the core of their political identity.
To that end, Omar quickly pivoted from anti-Semitic invective to an attempt to laud Jews for their past support for justice. In a tweet thread, in which she again burnished her credentials as a woman of color and an immigrant “who survived war and witnessed injustice first-hand” and then proceeded to play a different Jewish card by citing the involvement of Jews in the Civil Rights movement in the past in the 1950s and 60s.
The implication of this was that those who take issue with her support for an anti-Semitic war on Israel are betraying the legacy of people like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But it was also an attempt to position herself as an advocate for a black-Jewish alliance on social justice rather than, as she really is, an extremist politician who traffics in anti-Semitism and whose invective and incitement can be linked to the surge in attacks on Jews across the United States in the wake of her statements about Israel.
Not everyone is falling for this.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations roundly condemned her for what it rightly termed her “anti-Semitic accusations.” David Harris, the head of the American Jewish Committee similarly took her to task in a Newsweek column for having “a problem with Jews.”
But what has to be most galling for those who are put in her cross-hairs is the way so many Jews who identify as “progressives” are not only willing to give her a pass but are actively assisting Omar’s campaign against Israel, its supporters and any Democrat who has the guts to notice what she’s doing.
For example, Rabbi Jonah Pesner, the head of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism who had nothing to say about Omar’s attacks on Israel and Jews. But he actually endorsed Omar’s attempt to co-opt Jewish history in her defense with a fawning tweet: “Thank you Rep. Omar for lifting up this history. We need our communities standing together in the fight for justice and against antisemitism and anti-Muslim bigotry,” he wrote.
With the leader of the political arm of the largest Jewish denomination in America behind her, Haaretz was right to claim in a headline that, “Jewish Democrats Back Ilhan Omar.”
Nor was the RAC alone. Two Jewish members of the House Democratic caucus, Representatives Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) and David Cicillone (D-R.I.) also spoke up in her defense with the latter claiming all the fuss was the work of “right wingers” who were “trying to create a controversy where there is none.” Halie Soifer, the head of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, which has recently signaled that its mission is to advocate for both Israel and “Palestinian rights” amid the Hamas attacks on the Jewish state also “strongly welcomed” Omar’s comments.
It should be remembered that the majority of House Jewish Democrats chose to be silent or actually support Omar rather than join with those who condemned her comparison of Israel to a terrorist group.
It isn’t only progressives who seek to cozy up to anti-Semites. This past week, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) was called out for planning to host a fundraiser with alt-right anti-Semite and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, who has previously been shunned by mainstream conservatives. Like Omar when she was asked about her “Benjamins” slur, Gosar claimed ignorance of who he was dealing with. But the point here is that Jewish Republicans were quick to condemn Gosar rather than support him.
By contrast, progressives are blinded both by their partisan aversion to taking on their ideological allies like Omar, but also often effectively silenced by her status as a woman of color. The Jewish left has bought into the toxic myths of critical race theory and intersectionality and are so conscious of having “white privilege” to the point where they are simply incapable of realizing the connection between leftists and attacks on Jews and Israel.
That inability to spurn anyone, no matter how egregious their behavior, who can fit into a race category that denotes “oppressed status,” acts as a permission slip for Jew-hatred that Omar is happy to accept. That Omar is effectively given a pass by the media establishment (including Jews like Tapper, who failed to challenge her attack on Jews in his interview with her) is bad enough. But that progressive Jews are still lining up with her tells you everything you need to know about the partisan sickness and ideological madness that is doing such terrible damage to the country’s political culture.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS—Jewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
What about a nuthouse?
A Supreme Blow to Intimidation
Sheldon Whitehouse is unhappy about Thursday’s ruling. That’s a good sign.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is unhappy with Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling that reins in his ability to harass political opponents. Perhaps he and his fellow intimidators should have been less brazen.
The justices celebrated the Fourth of July with one of their more important First Amendment rulings in decades. The high court’s decision in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta strikes down an attempt by California politicians to cast what Chief Justice John Roberts called “a dragnet for sensitive donor information from tens of thousands of charities each year.” It also marked the court’s belated if crucial recognition that the 21st century requires a new approach to disclosure.
The risks of “bomb threats, protests, stalking, and physical violence,” the chief justice wrote, “seem to grow with each passing year,” giving “anyone with access to a computer” the power to compile information to destroy others. And the opinion’s references to past cases make clear the threat to donors doesn’t come only from hackers or doxxers but from government itself.
Mr. Whitehouse didn’t get a mention—the chief justice is a gentleman—but the senator can take a bow. For more than a decade, progressives have been weaponizing disclosure laws, using them to harass and intimidate political opponents. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin forged a popular tactic in 2013, using a letter to attempt to expose and shame donors to the free-market American Legislative Exchange Council—a naked effort to cripple the group.
Since then, Mr. Whitehouse has taken on the lead harasser role. He cloaks his intentions in warnings about “dark money” and “front groups.” But his threats have become so obvious that there is no longer any denying his objectives. Whether he’s demanding confidential financial information from free-market nonprofits or insisting on new rules to expose the donors to organizations that submit court briefs, his targets are always on one side—the right—and his clear goal is to punish them.
He’s been aided by the Democrats who ginned up the Internal Revenue Service scandal over the targeting of conservative nonprofits and liberal groups that launch boycotts of corporations whose executives and political-action committees contribute to political campaigns. And by the anonymous activists in 2008 who mined disclosure records to compile a database of contributors to California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage—used to target donors’ homes and businesses and get people fired. With today’s routine online doxxings, the Lincoln Project’s proposed blacklist, politicized prosecutors, cancel culture and campus tribunals, the Supreme Court can no longer pretend disclosure is benign sunshine.
Critics of AFP are already decrying it as a 6-3 “conservative” ruling, but what stood out was the bipartisan nature of the cause the court supported. Nearly 300 organizations signed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of the two right-leaning petitioners, groups that, as Chief Justice Roberts noted, span “the full range of human endeavors.” It’s not often you see agreement among the Pacific Legal Foundation, the NAACP, the Cato Institute, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the National Association of Manufacturers and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Even groups on the left have come to understand the sauce, the goose and the gander. Conservatives might not practice donor intimidation much, but give them time.
The breadth and depth of this coalition highlight the weakness of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent. It seems willfully blind to today’s partisan environment and its threats. It airily insists that there is no burden to nonprofits in complying and no risk that donors will be intimidated. Besides, she says, California is capable of keeping the information secure! She wrote these lines a few weeks after someone leaked the confidential tax data of thousands of Americans to ProPublica.
Mr. Whitehouse instantly issued a sky-is-falling statement, warning that we are “now on a clear path to enshrining a constitutional right to anonymous spending in our democracy.” The dissenting opinion fretted that the majority “marks reporting and disclosure requirements with a bull’s-eye.” Expect the decision to rally the left’s demands that the Supreme Court be packed with a liberal majority.
Yet as all these critics well know, the issue at hand was the disclosure of donors to nonprofits. The opinion doesn’t touch the current reporting regime for donors to political campaigns. Transparency advocates might argue that this latter disclosure helps expose or guard against corruption or its appearance. But they’ve never had a reasonable argument that government should have the unfettered ability to snoop in Americans’ private associational activities—even more so with today’s high-tech tools and viciously partisan environment.
The court reinforced that on Thursday, and not a moment too soon. Americans can head off to their Independence Day festivities a little more confident about their First Amendment rights.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
| Most Threatening When Weak? | ||
| by Niall Ferguson via TLS The risks China poses to the global security +++
|
No comments:
Post a Comment