Ilhan Omar's latest anti-Semitic comments

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Can you self-fellating hacks PLEASE shut the hell up about Which Party Has More Antisemites??? Whichever party it's coming from, it's not acceptable. And yes, there's a difference between observing that Israel has an unusually powerful policy lobby in the United States and claiming that Those People have wholesale "bought" our political leadership, which is what Omar is doing.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The Israel forcefield in washington continues.

lol, antisemites gonna antisemite

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

In case anyone is curious (probably not), she has apologized:

https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1095046561254567937

While I hope that she does actively call out all lobbies, and not just AIPAC, the fake outrage among people who don't actually give a crap about Jews and want to come across as "pro-Israel" for political expediency is, at best, cringeworthy.

I'm inclined to accept this apology, and hope she genuinely does learn from this. I'm not somebody who wants to think poorly of Omar or of others who are concerned with Israel's increasingly repressive security policies and democratic backsliding. We'll see whether this sticks; I hope it does.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

This thread is probably a sh**tshow like every thread on the issue, because most Atlas leftists would do anything to excuse their ideological brethern of antisemitism. So I won't reply to any of that, except say that I don't accept Ilhan's apology about this. No, her first instinct was to retweet people defending her and go the "look at my Jew over there!" route by retweeting Jews who don't care about antisemitism. She only apologized after decent Democrats like Max Rose and Nancy Pelosi attacked her comments, so I believe she doesn't care about people like me and has no moral compass until she proves me otherwise.

On point, as usual.

https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1095080391084523520

Trampling a minority community for a joke? Ridiculing an experience of genocide and persecution that was caused partly by stereotypes parroted by the congresswoman they were trying to defend? I ususally love the Onion, which is why this offends me so much- but I guess leftists only care when certain minorities are offended. F**k them this time.

Spare me the indignation. No one is trampling a minority community, and no joke should be off-limits because it "offends" certain people, minority or otherwise. ...

When Parrotguy refers to "an experience of genocide and persecution" he's obviously referring to past events like the Holocaust, pogroms, Khmelnytsky Uprising, etc., not necessarily to something ongoing. He even uses the word "was", which is a past-tense copula. If you'd still rather "not hear a word about" this, then that's your business, but you're not helping your case for not being antisemitic.

On a side note, I was reading a while back about the nation of Mauritania's complete failure to lift a finger to stop the practice of slavery beyond a nominal, all-but-unenforced legal ban (similar to Japan's not-even-trying nominal bans on things like whaling, prostitution, and loli pornography, only worse since it's literally slavery), and apparently a favorite tactic of the Mauritanian government when criticized for this is to claim that it's a distraction from the crimes of Israel. Food for thought.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Jews are not currently being stripped of their human rights anywhere near the extent the Palestinians are in their own homeland,

I suppose it is the case that the numerous Middle Eastern countries that have expelled their entire Jewish populations as a function of miscellaneous Arab nationalist projects aren't technically oppressing them at the moment, no.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Jews are not currently being stripped of their human rights anywhere near the extent the Palestinians are in their own homeland,

I suppose it is the case that the numerous Middle Eastern countries that have expelled their entire Jewish populations as a function of miscellaneous Arab nationalist projects aren't technically oppressing them at the moment, no.

If the Palestinians had only been merely expelled from their homeland, then the long list of crimes of Israel towards the Palestinians would be cut significantly shorter. Of course, the Palestinians have had to endure quite a bit more.

I have no idea how to respond to this point in a way that won't violate the terms of service. I'll pray for you.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Attempting to contribute to these sorts of threads in a reasonable and measured way feels sort of like playing one of those party games where you have to stack things or hang things off of each other in such a way as to reverse course whenever the structure starts toppling on one side. I'm not sure which are worse, Israel threads or abortion threads. Funnily enough, those are the two issues that a certain infamously dysfunctional DSA chapter expelled a friend of mine for wrongthink about a couple years back.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Attempting to contribute to these sorts of threads in a reasonable and measured way feels sort of like playing one of those party games where you have to stack things or hang things off of each other in such a way as to reverse course whenever the structure starts toppling on one side. I'm not sure which are worse, Israel threads or abortion threads. Funnily enough, those are the two issues that a certain infamously dysfunctional DSA chapter expelled a friend of mine for wrongthink about a couple years back.

Are you going to comment on every thread today to tell people how smart you are for not having opinions/never defending them?

Yes.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Last time I checked, critizing aipac is not comparable to calling neo-nazis "very fine people" or a sitting Republican Congressman endorsing white supremacist ideas.
Ohmar should have never apologized and I say this as a jew

Why are Atlas Socialists so supportive of Omar and so critical of AIPAC? I mean this as a general observation. And I should know the answer, giving that the left is becoming increasingly critical of Israel.

Same reason they oppose Trump. Both the Trump administration Israel generally (not just Netanyahu and Likud, but all hypothetical Israeli governments) want to limit immigration. Progressives believe limiting immigration is racist and that being racist is the worst crime possible. 

I don't support Omar, and I don't oppose Israel qua Israel in general any more than I would "oppose" any other country qua country and think it's ridiculous and in many cases bigoted that so many do, but this isn't even close to the biggest reason why I, or most other leftists, oppose Netanyahu and his increasingly antidemocratic and illiberal regime.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

When I think Israel, I don't, first and foremost, think immigration policy (unlike WillipsBrighton, who seems to, first and foremost, think immigration policy whenever he thinks any country, possibly even any political issue, on the planet).

If I were to think about Israel primarily in terms of its immigration policy, I'd probably pay a lot of attention to the fact a number of countries and non-state actors neighboring Israel have a key political and military goal of perpetrating a genocide against Israel's current majority group. This is simply not the case with immigration and border policy in most other countries, crypto-fascist conspiracy theories about muh white genocide and "them" "replacing" "us" aside. Preventing genocide strikes me as sufficiently compelling cause to contemplate (some) limitations on freedom of movement.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Even if using the Nazi-linked term "blood and soil" to refer to Israeli policy isn't antisemitic, it's at the very least in extremely bad taste.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Bernie called Omar to offer her support.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-sanders-called-ilhan-omar-to-offer-his-support-amid-anti-semitism-controversy?via=desktop&social=Reddit

Given his unambiguous endorsement of Corbyn, that's not a point in her favor.

Are you claiming that Bernie is an anti-semite now?

I don't know whether he is, but I do know he had no issue endorsing an unambiguous antisemite. So a slightly more ambiguous antisemite should be no problem.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you think Corbyn is a less ambiguous antisemite than Omar, since you also think he's a less ambiguous antisemite than Linda Sarsour somehow.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Crazy to think that this thread has been active for less than a week. It feels like generations have been born and died into it like Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.