It totally makes sense why Omar's comment was perceived as anti-semitic, because as you know it is very similar to a historically ubiquitous antisemitic trope about rich Jewish financiers being the "evil puppet masters" that you can trace from Hitler all the way to Alex Jones and the Rothchild / "globalist" rhetoric of today. Of course, if you are not a crazy racist, you realize that the idea that there is a smoke-filled room of Jewish people consciously manipulating everything in othe world to their benefit is absurd. Perhaps she buys into that vile nonsense in her heart, who knows.
But I think that these two statements
- accusing Jewish organizations of "wielding unprecedented power in the political system" when it is clear as damn day that they don't.
- accusing Jewish donors of having "undue influence" over political figures. (this includes George Soros, Sheldon Adelson, Mike bloomberg etc...)
are obviously patently false. There does not need to be a smoke-filled room full of anti-semitic puppetmaster caricatures for the above things to be true.
Of course AIPAC wields tremendous, undue influence in the political system, as all massive lobbying groups the size of AIPAC do.
Of course Soros, Bloomberg, Adelson wield tremendous, undue influence in the political system, as all billionaire donors do.
These general principles backed up by a mountain of political science research done in the last few decades.
All of these groups/billionaires holding outsize influence, even the ones I rather like (NEA, Soros, Steyer), should not be allowed to have the type of influence they do.
The question in the case of AIPAC is is the result of their undue influence in the best interest of the people of the United States, or is it pernicious like, say, the NRA?
I would say, like Mearsheimer and Walt do in their 2007 paper, that mindless support for Israeli foreign policy has sometimes worked to the United States' best interest but as of late has often not.
If you are of conscience, you have to admit it is possible to make that argument in good faith without automatically being a raging antisemite.
The problem is is that it is very effective in American politics to hysterically accuse your opponent of some personal defiiency rather than engage in a good faith debate with them, thus the OPs frustration.
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