Leopaltik1242
As waves of indignation swirl around Representative Ilhan Omar over her recent remarks about Israel, the new Congresswoman has basically three options: She can fold; she can continue sparring with an increasingly vocal pro-Israel chorus; or she can get more specific in her comments and expand her public critique.
Omar’s statements about the Israel lobby are obviously true: “It’s all about the Benjamins,” she tweeted, observing that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and pro-Israel lobby use money to further their interests in Congress—just as many other well-funded lobbies do.
“I want to ask, why is it OK for me to talk about the influence of the NRA, of fossil fuel industries, or Big Pharma, and not talk about a powerful lobby,” she has asked, raising a reasonable question about why some topics are fair game while others are off the table.
Omar’s statements are being read by some to play to ugly anti-Jewish refrains: They use money to control, they love Israel, not the United States, etc. But this reading requires a remarkably high level of sensitivity to Omar’s actual words—more than a little ironic considering the rather high levels of xenophobia in U.S. discourse, especially regarding things Muslim.
AIPAC has targeted numerous representatives in the past for speaking out against their influence and “special relationship” with the Pentagon.
AIPAC has targeted numerous representatives in the past for speaking out against their influence and “special relationship” with the Pentagon. They include Representatives Pete McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney and Earl Hilliard, as well as Republican Senator Charles Percy and Representative Paul Findley, who authored They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby.
Former Democratic Senator James Abourezk of South Dakota, possibly the most progressive Senator of the post-World War II era, wrote in 2011 about AIPAC: “Years ago, when Wolf Blitzer was an AIPAC employee . . . he literally shouted at me that, as Americans, AIPAC members had the right to lobby Congress. My response then was the same as it is now: When lobbying is being done for a foreign government, as AIPAC does, it’s wrong.”
Grant Smith, author of Big Israel, reminds us that in 1962, AIPAC, which began as a project of the American Zionist Council, “was ordered to register as an Israeli foreign agent. The Justice Department kept this fact secret until 2010. It has never tried to enforce the order.” Imagine how much more quickly the U.S. Jewish community could have found its own voice rather than be pigeonholed regarding Israel if that law had been enforced.
Perhaps the most profound of Omar’s recent tweets on the matter are personal: “I am told everyday that I am anti-American if I am not pro-Israel. I find that to be problematic and I am not alone. I just happen to be willing to speak up on it and open myself to attacks.”
But she could go much further by speaking more specifically on actual Israeli-U.S. policy. For example, talking about U.S. policy being literally “all about the Benjamins” is a vast understatement. Money is certainly critical, but the U.S. government’s backing of Israel has more specifically to do with geopolitics; Israel crushing Arab nationalism in 1967 and preventing the development of Palestinian sovereignty.
The U.S. government refuses to acknowledge, in addition, that Israel has nuclear weapons. In 2011, when Mike Pence was on the House Foreign Affairs Committee—the same committee Omar is on now, and what AIPAC is clearly aiming to get her off of—I tried asking him about Israel’s nuclear weapons. His non-response was nearly comical (see for yourself).
What politicos like Pence mean when they talk about a “cherished relationship” between the U.S. and Israel—whether they acknowledge it or not—is the settler colonial pattern they have both followed.
Omar can use being the center of attention to go even further in highlighting Israeli criminality and nuclear threats to humanity.
This origins of this connection are examined by the Reverend Michael Prior in an essay titled “The Right to Expel: The Bible and Ethnic Cleansing.” He wrote: “The term ‘ethnic cleansing’...is related to a conflation of the biblical notions of ‘unclean’/‘profane' with the command to ‘drive out’ the inhabitants of Canaan (Exodus 23-24; Numbers 33; Deuteronomy 33 and Joshua), because, according to the biblical legend, they had defiled themselves by their evil practices (Leviticus 18:24). Uniquely in ancient literature, the biblical legend projects the extermination of the defiled indigenes as a divine mandate. With the authority of its religious provenance that value system has been incorporated into European imperialist ideologies, ‘legitimizing’ the destruction or displacement of indigenous peoples.”
Thus, the most gruesome part of the Old Testament was justification for settlers of the United States to kill and rob indigenous inhabitants. The same mentality is at work again in the land of Canaan.
Omar has shown willingness to confront some of this. (For example when questioning Elliott Abrams, a criminal abettor of genocide, over his record in Latin America.) But such critical aspects are crying out for more public airing. Omar can use being the center of attention to go even further in highlighting Israeli criminality and nuclear threats to humanity.
The criminal rot of imperial policies that is highlighted by the U.S.-Israeli “special relationship” rests on lies and ridiculous absurdities, but it runs deep and it will take a very determined critique to dislodge. Many are now saying #StandWithIlhan, but a huge question is how firmly she will stand.