Good lord, that’s a low bar.
Aceris
1708
Primarily I’m saying that if lots of people like you disagree with plenty of reasonable people on your side about whether something is antisemitic then there’s going to be a controversy, and complaining about the controversy is basically trying to silence voices speaking on behalf of a historically oppressed minority.
Now, it’s true that I’m also saying that it is antisemitic, not in a “Omar is an evil person” way, but in a “Omar needs to learn to respect a historically oppressed minority after spending a lot of time in an environment with a lot of prejudice against that minority” way.
I like Beto, but I’m not sure he has accomplished enough at this point in his career other than running a pretty good losing Senate campaign.
Timex
1710
The hypocrisy of the GOP doesn’t mean that hypocrisy is suddenly OK. You don’t do the right thing on a purely transactional basis, because someone else does the right thing.
Omar’s original comment that sparked this, was stupid. It was beneath what we should demand of a sitting member of congress. The fact that someone like Steve King is already beneath that bar does not mean that the bar is lowered to the bottom.
Suggesting that support for Israel is all about money is problematic for two reasons:
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The long history of suggesting that rich jews control everything, is a thing. We, rightfully, criticized folks like McCarthy when he told a room full of Jews that they wouldn’t like him, because he didn’t want their money. Even if not overtly anti-semitic, such statements carry weight and perpetuate historical stereotypes. And you guys all know this. You say exactly this kind of thing, in a number of situations.
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Support for Israel is, from a purely factual position, not all about money. It’s not, and to suggest that it is demonstrates a pretty profound lack of understanding of the middle east and US history and policy in the region.
GOP calls for Omar to be thrown out of congress can rightfully be laughed at, but we should not handwave away her statements and pretend like they’re fine. They’re not fine. It was a dumb statement.
rowe33
1711
I’m just glad conservative media is focusing on this important issue instead of the stupid dangerous insane shit that Trump says 24/7.
Aceris
1712
Despite what else I’ve said I do kind of agree with this. The criticisms have all been written. We’ve got whatever statement/apology we’re going to get out of Omar. Either do some meaningful to censure her (which I’ve already said would be premature and unjustified) or shut up because all action achieves is give more news cycles to the right wing hate machine.
Banzai
1713
If only the dems weren’t in such disarray, they’d be able to focus on the president.
I mean, now that we have Trump, the standards of accomplishments are so low, I don’t think this is a concern.
It’s a concern to me if we are using Trump as the guideline for presidential qualifications.
On the plus side, he has 3x as much House experience as another losing-Senate-candidate-turned-president, one A. Lincoln.
Ah so looking at experience alone, he’s got the potential to be somewhere between Trump and Lincoln.
Well, you can also look at the words that are coming out of his mouth.
In other news, Sherrod Brown has announced he’s NOT running for President
imho, this is a good thing; Dems need senators, and he was a long shot to win the nomination, anyway.
Words are one of Beto’s strengths, but they are just words. He’s going to need to make a good case for why he should be President over people who have more political accomplishments.
I thought this was a pretty good op-ed. Quoted at length.
Because, as I said, her ineptness and unconcern doesn’t make her special or notable. It doesn’t make her anti-Semitic. It just makes her a typical non-Jewish American lefty.
I am absolutely, unambiguously furious about what this attention reveals. There is a sniff test that a lot of Jews do regarding criticism of Israel. We ask if that criticism is proportional. If not, we ask why Israel is receiving such undue attention while other things in other places go unnoticed.
Arguably, it’s a sort of whataboutism, but one rooted in self-preservation, because so often someone who is utterly, frothingly obsessed with Israel often proves to have issues with Jews in general.
Not always. Maybe not even most of the time. But often enough.
What is so special about Omar that she merits this amount of hand-wringing when, after all, she didn’t prompt the Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation massacre, nobody on the left did.
The prompt came from the President of the United States. It came from him wielding exactly the same sort of tropes Omar is accused of, but to an audience that is armed and actively white nationalist. That seems, proportionally speaking, like a vastly bigger deal.
And let me get back to the word tropes. Holy cow. Jews haven’t been this worried about tropes since the month before their bar/bat mitzvahs. It’s thrown up as a sort of absolute defense — she wielded a trope! Anything that follows is now deserved!
Yes, she should have been more cautious, but our response doesn’t pass the sniff test. It is, at best, a demonstration of a typical failure of risk perception, where we are more afraid of sharks than, say, falling down a flight of stairs, even though the stairs will get you every time and the shark almost never.
Isn’t part of this because Israel is supposed to be one of the ‘good guys,’ on the side of Western liberal democracies? I think human rights violations in France might get more attention than they do in, say, China, just in a ‘man bites dog’ sense.
This segment is important:
I am furious at the right wing for weaponizing legitimate Jewish concerns about this, which benefits them, benefits Israel, but does not benefit American Jews. I am beside myself at Zionist Jews and their enormous, calculating, and profoundly anti-Semitic Evangelical base of support for the years of work they have done to already weaponize the charge of anti-Semitism to deflect criticisms of Israel.
And yet, the article completely misses the elephant in the room, that it is Bibi and Likud who are the ones who have cast Israel’s lot with the Right Wing in the US.
It’s just different expectations. Democrats are expected to be perfect, and Republicans are expected to occasionally furrow their brow at the multiple obvious racists in their midst.
