jhu72 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 5:14 pm
kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 4:29 pm
jhu72 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 2:34 pm
runrussellrun wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 2:25 pm
jhu72 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 1:54 pm
So Ilhan Omar is being accused of anti-Semitism for saying that U.S. pro-Israel advocates are pushing for “allegiance to a foreign country.” and “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.".
Sorry, but this is not anti-Semitic. The fact that politicians think it is, just makes Omar's point. She makes no statement referencing a race, a culture or an individual. She is criticizing a nation state that arguably deserves some criticism.
would possibly buy your hunk of junk nonsense......if she threw some criticism towards Palistine and some of their fun clubs. Hamas is good dip.
She is not being accused of supporting any of those organizations. She is being accused of making anti-Semitic statements in congress. -- which is nonsense.
Nonsense according to you.
But considering the history and persecution of the Jewish people, particularly in Germany, Omar's comments were especially hurtful.
The Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling on her to hold a vote on a resolution rejecting what he said were Omar’s anti-Semitic statements.
“Accusing Jews of having allegiance to a foreign government has long been a vile anti-Semitic slur that has been used to harass, marginalize, and persecute the Jewish people for centuries," Greenblatt wrote. "Sometimes referred to as the 'dual loyalty' charge, it alleges that Jews should be suspected of being disloyal neighbors or citizens because their true allegiance is to their co-religionists around the world or to a secret and immoral Jewish agenda."
Read it all here:
https://www.adl.org/media/12606/download
Hurtful is not anti-Semitic. She wasn't accusing Jews of having allegiance to a foreign government. She was accusing those people who blindly support Israel of having an allegiance to a foreign government. The accusation a bit hyperbolic, but not anti-Semitic. Those who support Israel blindly are more Christian than Jewish. The Jews I know, and live with, and celebrate holidays with are not blind to what Israel is / has become.
The holocaust was a terrible event in our history. It should illicit sympathy from and be an object lesson for all. It however does not give second and third generation descendants the right to eternal victimhood status nor a pass in treating others as their ancestors have been treated.
72, at the risk of being flat wrong about what she said and what she meant, let me just say that at a minimum she was insensitive to how such accusations of 'allegiance to Israel' have frequently been the hateful, bigoted claims of the most overtly anti- Semitic groups here in the US and in Europe.
The very worst anti-Semites have sought to
appear to be simply challenging the degree of influence in our national policy of support for the State of Israel. Likewise those who are less overtly anti-Semitic.
But it's all of apiece with tropes of Jewish money, power and international conspiracy. And these tropes go back many centuries, supported by Christian bigots who have interpreted a few passages of the New Testament, particularly parts of John, to justify their bigotry and competition with, and/or jealousy of, the rise of the educated, merchant class, especially those who did not tithe to the Church.
These beliefs, taught from the pulpit, have been the underpinnings of catastrophic evil acts. Repeatedly through history, not simply in one country or one era. I don't think that awful, repeated history justifies giving anyone a 'pass' to do evil upon others, but it does justify vigilance against the reemergence of anti-Semitism, and I'd argue, also ample justification for a protected Jewish homeland.
Her bringing her own religion into the picture, with its own fraught history, certainly doesn't help explain away this misstep as just a challenge to prior policy orthodoxy. It instead gives rise to the questions of how religion
can (it doesn't have to) be used to justify bigotry and violence.
Critique of the Netanyahu gov't's policies is indeed not necessarily anti-Semitic; lots of your and my Jewish-American friends are certainly quite critical. This does not mean that they do not support Israel, nor more specifically Israel as a Jewish state. They do. (Of course some orthodox Jews don't support current Zionism at all, based on their own religious interpretations, but that's a small minority of the greater Jewish diaspora, much less the bulk of American Jews.)
But it's a very, very tricky area to navigate without falling into anti-Semitic tropes.
I hope that she finds a path to indeed represent a diversity of view, including full-throated support for the dignity of Palestinians, without succumbing to using anti-Semitic tropes that feed the hate of the worst bigots.
Challenging!