National Review Online
Monday, February 11, 2019
‘Whichever way you turn to trace the harmful streams of
influence that flow through society, you come upon a group of Jews.” So argued The International Jew, the infamous
anti-Semitic tract published by Henry Ford, who insisted that American institutions
were “under the control, moral and financial, of the Jewish manipulators of the
public mind.” In the anti-Semitic hoax tract The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, scheming Jews hatch a plot to
dominate world affairs financially: “You may imagine for yourselves what
immense power we shall thereby secure for ourselves,” the fraud reads.
Notorious Jew-hater Louis Farrakhan praised Donald Trump for purportedly
disdaining “Jewish money,” saying: “Anytime a man can say to those who control
the politics of America, ‘I don’t want your money,’ that means you can’t
control me. And they cannot afford to give up control of the presidents of the
United States.” That’s a weird claim to make about Jared Kushner’s
father-in-law, but then Farrakhan is fruitcake who believes that white people
were concocted in the laboratory of an ancient magician.
Representative Ilhan Omar, who represents Minnesota’s
fifth congressional district, has chosen an ugly and reprehensible bandwagon to
climb aboard.
Representative Omar insists that American Jews are paying
members of Congress to take a pro-Israel stance in what the ever-gentle Matthew
Yglesias of Vox with characteristic
boldness describes as some “moderately ill-advised tweets.” Representative Omar
specifically cites the actions of AIPAC and, quoting from the noted political
philosopher Puff Daddy, insists that it’s “about the Benjamins, baby,” those
apparently being Franklin and Netanyahu.
This is not Representative Omar’s first foray into
anti-Semitic tropes; earlier, she accused Jews of “hypnotizing” the world on
Israel’s behalf, a statement for which she later apologized after sustained
public criticism. Her colleague Representative Rashida Tlaib of Henry Ford’s
home state has joined Representative Omar in this anti-Semitic smear campaign,
having accused Jewish Americans of having dual loyalties, calling to mind
another ancient Jew-hating line of argument.
The Jewish state divides the Democratic party: The
majority of the American public is pro-Israel — but that average includes the
87 percent of Republicans who are pro-Israel and the 59 percent of independents
who share that view, which is a minority position among Democrats, fewer than
half of whom take a friendly view of the Jewish state. The Left more broadly is
increasingly hostile not only to the government of the state of Israel but to
Jews per se, and increasingly tolerant of overt anti-Semitism, as in the case
of the organizers of the Women’s March and their embrace of the aforementioned
Louis Farrakhan, whom even Barack Obama felt obliged to court, albeit
shamefacedly.
The old proverb about race in the United States held that
in the North they embraced African Americans as a group but rejected them
individually, whereas in the South they might embrace African Americans on an
individual basis but hated them as a group. American progressives who insist
that they are not anti-Semites but only anti-Israel take something like the
southern view: They hate Jews as a national entity, not on a case-by-case
basis. If that is the best they can
say about themselves, that isn’t very much.
But it certainly is not the worst they can say about themselves. The Left and the Democratic
party tolerate anti-Semitism openly expressed, period: From the Reverend Al
Sharpton and his Jewish “bloodsuckers” in Crown Heights to the footsie-playing
with Farrakhan to Representative Omar’s trafficking in the worst of 1920s
anti-Semitic mythology, anti-Semitism is now a regular part of politics among
Democrats, from the far-left radicals who see in Israel an extension of
American imperialism to those who appeal to the anti-Semitism that is all too
common among African Americans and Muslim Americans, the latter of whom are an
important new Democratic constituency. This is the reality that informed Representative
Omar’s libel.
After a great deal of public criticism, including
criticism from several congressional Democrats, Representative Omar offered a
limited apology for her remarks — she said she did not intend to offend “Jewish
Americans as a whole” — but then doubled down on her conspiratorial assessment
of U.S. politics, linking AIPAC to the National Rifle Association as examples
of the “problematic role of lobbyists in our politics.” That’s an excellent
example, but not for the reasons Representative Omar imagines. AIPAC does not
in fact spend very much money on politics: It is not among the 100 biggest
spenders on lobbying or even among the 5,000 biggest donors to political
campaigns. Neither does the NRA, which was No. 4,161 among political donors in
2018 and No. 83 among lobbyists. For comparison, the NRA’s political
contributions amount to a little less than 3 percent of those from the
teachers’ unions. The power of these organizations does not come from bribery —
it comes from belief: In this case, the belief that Israel is the only genuine
liberal democracy in the Middle East and our nation’s most important and most
reliable ally there. This is a belief that is apparent to many clear-eyed
Americans — no Jewish “hypnosis” necessary.
Does Representative Omar share that belief? Is the
Democratic party losing touch with it? That Representative Omar is more of an
obvious anti-Semitic bigot than is currently socially acceptable in Democratic
circles is, in the greater scheme of things, a less important question than
that.
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