The Omar Incident: In recent weeks, Democrats showed poor political judgment by allowing socialistic freshmen in the House to set their agenda. But last week, they did much worse than that. They showed a true moral failing with their inability to call out and condemn anti-Semitism in their own ranks.
In discussing this issue, it must be said first of all that criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism. Yes, many pro-Israel conservatives are sure to disagree with (mostly) liberal complaints over the Netanyahu government or West Bank settlements. But people of good will can disagree on such issues without disparaging anyone.
In fact, Americans have quite varied ideas about the Middle East. and although there are clear conservative and liberal tendencies, they don’t always split cleanly along ideological lines. People of all ideological persuasions differ as to how to handle Iran’s threat to Israel, or how to settle the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. And good-faith disagreements over these matters are not at all indications of anti-Semitism.
The same cannot be said, however, of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and her rhetoric about American Jews supportive of Israel as money-grubbing dual loyalists who have “hypnotized the world” and purchased the support of the U.S. Congress in a behind-the-scenes conspiracy. This rhetoric is overtly anti-Semitic. This was the reason Democratic leaders responded to with such obvious concern from the outset.
At first, they seemed to be handling things. Then it all fell apart.
The week started off well enough. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had brought a resolution to the floor indirectly rebuking Omar for her anti-Semitic comments — the second such resolution for Omar in just the first two months of her career in Congress.
Then the intersectional Left got involved, deciding that Omar, the little lamb, was being unfairly targeted. The excuses they made for her reeked of the idea that this 40-year-old member of the U.S. House is but a child. It was
One Democrat after another — including key presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris — began excusing Omar’s rhetoric. And before you knew it, House Democrats had delayed and then diluted the resolution. Instead of a resolution against anti-Semitism, prompted by Omar, the House was voting on a resolution condemning the oppression (and supposed oppression) of every imaginable aggrieved group.
Democrats and their allies in the media can dress this up any way they like — it is what it is. And it means something, given all of the Democrats’ complaints about President Trump “emboldening” anti-Semitism before the 2018 election. Those now appear to be little more than a mere self-serving and partisan complaint. And Jews supportive of Israel who vote Democrat — most of them, likely — have new reasons for concern that the Democratic Party of 2010 never gave them.
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