Friday, March 08, 2019

03/08 Links Pt2: Bret Stephens: Ilhan Omar Knows Exactly What She Is Doing; Every Democratic Excuse For Ilhan Omar's Anti-Semitism Is More Vile Than The Last; Academics Appropriate the Holocaust to Bash Israel

From Ian:
Bret Stephens (NYTs): Ilhan Omar Knows Exactly What She Is Doing
As the criticism of Omar mounts, it becomes that much easier for her to seem like the victim of a smear campaign, rather than the instigator of a smear. The secret of anti-Semitism has always rested, in part, on creating the perception that the anti-Semite is, in fact, the victim of the Jews and their allies. Just which powers-that-be are orchestrating that campaign? Why are they afraid of open debate? And what about all the bigotry on their side?

The goal is not to win the argument, at least not anytime soon. Yet merely by refusing to fold, Omar stands to shift the range of acceptable discussion — the so-called Overton window — sharply in her direction. Ideas once thought of as intellectually uncouth and morally repulsive have suddenly become merely controversial. It’s how anti-Zionism has abruptly become an acceptable point of view in reputable circles. It’s why anti-Semitism is just outside the frame, bidding to get in.

House Democrats are now wrangling over the text of a resolution that was initially intended as a condemnation of anti-Semitism, with Omar as its implicit target. At this writing it is mired in predictable controversy, as members of the party’s progressive wing and black caucus rally to Omar’s side in the first open challenge to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership. In the Senate, the presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Warren have weighed in with statements that painted Omar as a victim of Islamophobia — which she is — without mentioning that she’s also a purveyor of anti-Semitic bigotry — which she surely is as well.

It says something about the progressive movement today that it has no trouble denouncing Republican racism, real and alleged, every day of the week but has so much trouble calling out a naked anti-Semite in its own ranks. This is how progressivism becomes Corbynism. It’s how the left finds its own path toward legitimizing hate. It’s how self-declared anti-fascists develop their own forms of fascism.

If Pelosi can’t muster a powerful and unequivocal resolution condemning anti-Semitism, then Omar will have secured her political future and won a critical battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. At that point, the days when American Jews can live comfortably within the Democratic fold will be numbered.
Ben Shapiro: Worst Defense Of Ilhan Omar's Anti-Semitism Yet


The Democratic Party Has Normalized Anti-Semitism
This week, the Democratic Party was unable to pass a watered-down, platitudinous resolution condemning anti-Semitism, due to “fierce backlash” from presidential candidates, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and the now-powerful progressive base. Rather than censuring Rep. Ilhan Omar, the intellectually frivolous, Hamas-supporting freshman representative from Minnesota, she was rewarded and inoculated from party criticism.

More consequently, the Democrats deemed Protocols of Zion-style attacks a legitimate form of debate. That’s because Omar, despite what you hear, has repeatedly attacked Jews, not only Israel supporters, and certainly not only specific Israeli policies.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who would finally bring an “All Lives Matter” resolution to the floor, told reporters she didn’t believe the congresswoman’s comments were “intentionally anti-Semitic.” No educated human believes Omar inadvertently accused “Benjamin”-grubbing Rootless Cosmopolitans of hypnotizing the world for their evil. These are long-standing, conspiratorial attacks on the Jewish people, used by anti-Semites on right and left, and popular throughout the Islamic world.

Even the Democratic Party activist groups that typically cover for the Israel-haters, like the Anti- Defamation League, have condemned Omar. Yet it was the lie that coursed through the Democratic Party’s defense of Omar.

Anti-Semitism part of wave of `depraved hatred', pope says
Pope Francis on Friday branded anti-Semitism part of a wave of "depraved hatred" sweeping some countries and urged everyone to be vigilant against it.

In comments to members of the American Jewish Committee during a visit to the Vatican, he also reiterated that it was sinful for Christians to hold anti-Semitic sentiments because they shared a heritage with Jews.

"A source of great concern to me is the spread, in many places, of a climate of wickedness and fury, in which an excessive and depraved hatred is taking root," Francis said. "I think especially of the outbreak of anti-Semitic attacks in various countries."

Francis did not name any of those countries, but government statistics released last month showed more than 500 anti-Semitic attacks occurred last year in France, which has Europe's biggest Jewish community. That was a 74 percent increase from 2017.

"I stress that for a Christian any form of anti-Semitism is a rejection of one's own origins, a complete contradiction," Francis said.




John Podhoretz: The Democrats and Anti-Semitism
More horrifying were the words of House Whip James Clyburn, who suggested—as my friend Seth Mandel says—that families of Holocaust survivors should check their white privilege in the face of Omar’s history as a Somali refugee: “There are people who tell me, ‘Well, my parents are Holocaust survivors.’ ‘My parents did this.’ It’s more personal with her.” Yes, more personal than the Holocaust. Thanks so much, Third Ranking Official in the House of Representatives.

Presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders said that the attacks on Omar were intended to make it impossible to have serious discussion of Israel and the Palestinians. Fellow candidate Kamala Harris suggested that Omar was the real victim here: “I am concerned that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk….I also believe there is a difference between criticism of policy or political leaders, and anti-Semitism.”

Let’s be clear here. Nobody baited Ilhan Omar into saying Jews were hypnotizing the world, or that Jews were controlling American politics with their money, or that Jews were engaged in a conspiracy to force her to apologize for her words. She said these things herself, on her own, without prompting. They have nothing to do with “policy,” or with her pain as a Somali refugee, or anything else. They have to do with her idea that evil Jews are manipulating reality. This is as anti-Semitic as anti-Semitism gets.

People can play whataboutism games all they like, but not with me, people. I’ve attacked Donald Trump over Charlottesville. I’ve attacked Steve King for his racism. Ilhan Omar is a despicable anti-Semite and rather than trying to find a way to separate themselves from her, the grandees of the Democratic Party are actually, or effectively, or implicitly embracing her.

This could be an inflection point in American political history—the moment at which the Democratic Party decided that it had to choose between Jews and intersectionality and chose the latter.

The question is what American Jews are going to do about it.


Ilhan Communication
I have a new hobby. It's collecting the excuses Democrats make for Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democratic congresswoman who has an unhealthy fixation on Jewish influence, Jewish money, and Jewish loyalty. Omar has said that Israel "hypnotized the world," attributing Jews with the power of mind control in the service of manipulating public opinion. She's said the only reason Congress supports Israel is Jewish campaign donations. Most recently, using the classic anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty, she criticized supporters of Israel for having "allegiance to a foreign power." A real treasure, Omar is. A typical freshman congresswoman sees her mission as—forgive the expression—bringing home the bacon for her district. Not Ilhan. Her project is to mainstream anti-Semitic rhetoric within the Democratic Party. Once upon a time, you'd have to visit the invaluable website of the Middle East Media Research Institute to hear such tripe. Now you just need to flip on C-SPAN.

And Democrats are powerless to stop it. They're tripping over themselves, making rationalizations, dodging reality, and trying to clean up this anti-Semitic mess. Omar is new to this, they say. She never intended to come across as anti-Semitic. She can't help it. "She comes from a different culture." She didn't know what she was saying—she's a moron! She's just trying to "start a conversation" about the policies of Israel's government. And why are you singling her out, anyway. "She is living through a lot of pain." She's black, she's a woman, and she's Muslim. You can't condemn her without also condemning white men of privilege. What are you, racist? Islamophobic? Shame on you for picking on this poor lady, who just happens to say that American Jews serve a foreign power by buying off politicians and using the Force to blinker people's minds.

Before such "arguments"—they are really assertions of victimhood to intimidate critics—Nancy Pelosi shudders. She's supposed to be this Iron Lady, returned to power after exile, ruling her caucus with a vise-like grip. But her hands are covered in Palmolive. She's spent the first weeks of Congress doing little more than responding to the various insanities of Omar and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Pelosi will condemn Omar one minute, before appearing with her on the cover of Rolling Stone the next. She's lost a step. She can't hold her caucus together when Republicans call for motions to recommit on the House floor. The policies her candidates ran on in swing districts vanished under the solar-powered glare of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal. We're not talking about covering preexisting conditions, we're pledging to rid the world once and for all of the scourges of air travel and cow flatulence. Pelosi's trigger-happy committee chairmen, firing their subpoena cannons into the air at random, look like goofballs desperate to impeach President Trump.
Qanta Ahmed: This Muslim is appalled at failure to condemn Jew-hater Omar
Anti-Semitism is not merely the hatred of Jews, animus directed at Jews or prejudice. Unlike all other bigotries, which are indeed repugnant, anti-Semitism presents the Jews as an evil to be eradicated.

Before the Civil War, Southern senators and representatives defended the obscene institution of slavery. Afterward, many members of Congress openly expressed racist views about the supposed inferiority of African-Americans.

Other groups were targeted as well with hateful speech and discriminatory laws.

But this is 2019. We’ve come a long way from the days when racism, anti-Semitism and many other forms of prejudice are acceptable.

Democratic leaders in the House failed the test of true leadership Thursday when they let Omar escape condemnation for her anti-Semitism.

Jews and we who support them and their right to a homeland in Israel should remember the congressional day of infamy we witnessed on Thursday when another important date comes around: Nov. 3, 2020 – Election Day.

We need to elect courageous members of Congress who will stand up to anti-Semitism and denounce any member of Congress who embraces this cancer on the soul.

And hopefully, the good people of Omar’s Minnesota congressional district will reward her with retirement from the House.
Congressional Democrats take an 'All Lives Matter' approach to what used to be an anti-Semitism resolution
At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, some conservative opponents adopted a slogan that on its face was fairly innocuous: All Lives Matter.

In a vacuum, the statement is obviously true, but it was designed to ignore and downplay the fact that it was black lives, not other people's lives, that were being disproportionately ended in police confrontations under often dubious circumstances. Activists insisted on the phrase "Black Lives Matter" because Black Americans in particular felt disproportionately targeted by police violence and discrimination. The argument against the phrase "All Lives Matter" was not that it was untrue, but that it selfishly distracted from the specific group people under fire.

Half a decade later, Democrats have now embraced the "All Lives Matter" idea in their effort to sugarcoat the virulent anti-Semitism of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.

Omar's list of greatest anti-Semitic hits prompted the cooler heads in the Democratic Party to demand that the House pass a resolution condemning her racism. But in the time since, a number of congressional Democrats, including presidential candidates, have gone soft on anti-Semitism, rushing to Omar's defense. And as a result, the party has now reached an uneasy position of trying to dilute the resolution it already proposed.

The latest iteration begins with a condemnation of both anti-Semitism and "anti-Muslim discrimination and bigotry." The preamble name-drops an assortment of genuine horribles — the alt-Right marchers of Charlottesville, the Charleston church shooter, "anti-Muslim" bigotry, and mosque bombing — but in context, this does little but clutter the resolution sufficiently that one might not realize this is all about Omar's anti-Semitism. She is the sole reason this resolution is being proposed and voted on in the first place, yet her anti-Semitism now appears to play a secondary role in it.
Anti-Semitism Is the Religion of People Too Lazy to Accept the Complexity of Reality
Like some malignant virus, anti-Semitism, or, to speak more plainly, Jew-hatred, never dies. It always lies dormant, ready to wake.

In the wake of the Holocaust, the deliberate killing of Jewish, non-Israeli civilians is usually condemned across the political spectrum (butcheries of Israeli civilians being often excused as an understandable expression of Palestinian frustration). But those are easy sentiments, because it costs nothing to sympathize with dead Jews as opposed to standing up for live ones.

In the United States, anti-Semitism has taken many forms - whether it is nominally respectable professors insisting that a vast Israel Lobby controls American foreign policy, or clueless congressional representatives accusing American Jews of dual loyalties, or others speculating about diabolical financiers dominating the 2018 midterms. In each case, the unique feature of this kind of Jew-hatred is the wild, aggrieved indignation that results when it is called out or rebuked.

The essence of anti-Semitism is a confession of weakness and fear, a belief in occult forces that explain why you or your group has failed in some way. Anti-Semitism is, in short, the religion of people too lazy to accept the complexity of reality, who hunger for enemies whose power excuses their own deficiencies, and who cannot take responsibility for why their side has not won. It is a creed for losers.

For some period of time after the Holocaust, open Jew-hatred went into retreat. That has changed. In the form of Israel-hatred - to include a denial of that state's right to exist, a complete disregard of the threats it has faced, and simple lies about what it has done - it is now acceptable in many places.

In 2017, the FBI recorded more than three times as many anti-Jewish as anti-Muslim religious hate incidents, or almost 60% of the total. What is particularly scary now is that Jew-hatred seems to bring with it no real penalties.
In the end, this is less of a problem for the Jews than for everybody else. The Jews are used to their enemies, and against all odds have survived them. So it will be now as well. But the resurgent anti-Semitism tells us that our societies are more troubled than we think.
After House vote, Trump brands Democrats ‘anti-Jewish,’ ‘anti-Israel’
US President Donald Trump said Friday that a recent US House of Representatives vote condemning bigotry shows the opposition Democrats have become an “anti-Israel” and “anti-Jewish” party.

“I thought yesterday’s vote by the House was disgraceful,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “The Democrats have become an anti-Israel party and anti-Jewish party.”

The Republican president spoke a day after the vote on a resolution originally intended to condemn anti-Semitism following controversial comments by Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota that instead became a broader anti-hate measure.
Algemeiner Editor-in-Chief: House Needs to Send ‘Very Clear’ Message to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar Over ‘Demonization’ of Jews
The House of Representatives should condemn Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota over recent comments widely viewed as antisemitic, the editor-in-chief of The Algemeiner said during an i24 News debate on Tuesday.

According to media reports, House Democrats are divided over whether to single out Omar for rebuke or settle for a broader anti-hate resolution.

“It’s always good to condemn all hate, but the danger in doing so in this particular instance is that it dilutes a very clear message that needs to be sent to a very specific person with regards to a very specific behavior on a very specific occasion,” Dovid Efune noted.

“What we see is that this sort of demonization is the first step towards attacks and, God forbid, hate crimes, and having a member of Congress who has a level of responsibility pushing this line of thought is dangerous, it’s troubling and the Jewish community is really distraught about it,” he added.
Every Democratic Excuse For Ilhan Omar's Anti-Semitism Is More Vile Than The Last
This entire situation has placed Democrats in a rather uncomfortable situation. After all, Democrats have portrayed themselves as the party of tolerance, the party of anti-hate – and yet here they are, full-throatedly defending the world’s oldest and most durable hatred. This has led them to make a bevy of excuses for Omar’s commentary.

1. Omar Is A Benighted Child. This has been a common excuse made by Democratic leaders: Omar must not have known what she was saying. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has repeatedly said that Omar wasn’t “intentionally” anti-Semitic, and has added that she does not believe Omar “understands the full weight of the words” used. We’ve seen the same from many members of the media, who have turned themselves inside out to state that Omar’s longstanding anti-Semitism – anti-Semitism so brazen that it turned off even Jewish Democratic constituents in her district who met with her years ago – is actually just the result of her childlike naivete. If that’s the case, she should obviously be removed from the Foreign Affairs Committee. But it’s not the case. Omar knows precisely what she’s saying, which is why she keeps saying it.

2. She’s Not Anti-Semitic – She’s Just Anti-Israel! This is both the most common and the most dangerous excuse-making on Omar’s behalf. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) suggested that criticism of Omar was creating a “chilling effect on our public discourse” because it was actually “branding criticism of Israel as actually anti-Semitic.” Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) went even further and suggested that criticism of Omar put Omar at risk. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) suggested, “We must not…equate anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of the right-wing, Netanyahu government in Israel…What I fear is going on in the House now is an effort to target Congresswoman Omar as a way of stifling that debate.” But there is no debate. Omar didn’t make a single statement about Israel’s policies or government. She suggested that the Jewish State has hypnotic power, that Jewish money undergirds American support for Israel, and that Israel supporters have dual loyalty. This isn’t about Netanyahu or settlements or anything else Israel-related. It’s pure anti-Semitism.

This is a nefarious, evil trick. Anti-Israel commentators have for years stated that their commentary isn’t automatically anti-Semitic. They’re right – although calling for the destruction of the state of Israel or holding Israel to a double standard compared to other countries surely is. But now those same anti-Israel commentators are themselves conflating anti-Semitism with anti-Israel commentary. They’re stuffing open anti-Semitism into the anti-Israel box, then stating that those who criticize anti-Semitism are actually performing that conflation. If critics of Israel ever wonder why so many Israel supporters seem suspicious of their motives with regard to Jews, it’s because this trick has become so common.
2020: Democratic Candidates Undermine State Dept's Definition of Antisemitism with Ilhan Omar Defense
With their remarks, Harris, Sanders, and Warren seem to be legitimizing Omar’s antisemitic comments.

Omar’s charge about loyalty and her allegation that money is behind support for Israel both fall under the State Department’s public examples of antisemitism.

Drawing on its own previous definition, the State Department in 2016 adopted the “working definition” of anti-Semitism established by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, of which the State Department is a member.

The following non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism was adopted:
Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.
Consistent with that definition, the State Department offers official “contemporary examples of antisemitism.”

Among those examples are these two, which Omar’s comments clearly exemplify:
  • Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interest of their own nations.
  • Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
Thomas Friedman Gets AIPAC Wrong
In full melodramatic mode, Friedman wants to put the weight of the highest Jewish ideals on Aipac’s back: “I don’t like Aipac,” he writes, “because I strongly believe in the right of the Jewish people to build a nation-state in their ancient homeland — a nation-state envisaged by its founders to reflect the best of Jewish and democratic values.”

Is he implying that Aipac doesn’t believe in all that?

It’s clear that by putting so much undue pressure on Aipac, Friedman is unfairly maligning the group. First, he should know better. He should know, for example, that it’s not Israeli policies—right wing or left wing—that have most stymied the peace process, but the pathological rejectionism of a Palestinian leadership that refuses to do anything that might be good for the Jews or even their own people. Israeli voters have figured that out.

But by implying that Aipac could have done something about an epic failure to resolve an intractable conflict that has jeopardized “the best of Jewish and democratic values,” Friedman is doing more than unfairly maligning Aipac.

Unwittingly, he’s reinforcing the age-old canard of dark, all-powerful Jewish forces that control the levers of power and can get anything done.

No Israeli government, left or right, has succeeded in making peace with the Palestinians. By suggesting Aipac has the power to influence that, Friedman is treating the group the way anti-Semites treat any Jewish lobby group: Too powerful.
What Tom Friedman and Ilhan Omar Have in Common
Friedman wrote, “Given how Aipac has let itself become the slavish, unthinking tool of Netanyahu, who opposes a two-state solution, I believe Aipac works against Israel’s long-term interests.”

It’s not accurate that AIPAC has “let itself become the slavish, unthinking tool of Netanyahu.” In fact, in an unusual move, the organization recently publicly criticized Netanyahu for a move in Israel party politics, a point the Friedman column totally ignores. But given that the Israeli public repeatedly elected Netanyahu and that AIPAC’s mission is to support a strong US-Israel relationship, it’s not surprising that AIPAC would show Israel’s elected prime minister a certain amount of deference. I’m old enough to remember right-wing American Jews complaining when AIPAC was supporting the land-for-peace policies of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

If there’s anyone “unthinking” around here, it’s not AIPAC, it’s Friedman. His fantasy of a powerful, bipartisan pro-Israel lobbying organization that only backs Israeli policies when they accord with the preferences of liberal American Jews — rather than the policies chosen by the Israeli public through its democratic process — is totally unworkable. Friedman is free to start such an organization to compete with AIPAC if he feels there is a need for it. In fact, plenty of such rival organizations, from J Street to American For Peace Now and the Israel Policy Forum — already do exist. But none has been as successful as AIPAC, primarily because most of the people who care about US-Israel relations enough to devote significant amounts of time and money to it realize that it can’t be pursued with callous disregard for, or in direct opposition to, the choices of Israeli voters. Friedman’s quarrel, in other words, isn’t really with AIPAC, but with the Israeli public that elected Netanyahu.

Friedman insisted, “I love the Israelis.” If Friedman did love Israelis so much, you have to wonder why would he want the US pro-Israel lobby to undermine the prime minister the Israelis elected, rather than supporting him. Friedman, in other words, may have more in common with Ilhan Omar than even he is quite willing to admit in print.


Leftist Economist Krugman Excuses Dems' Anti-Semitism: Only Anti-Semitism From The Right Frightens Me
On Wednesday, leftist economist Paul Krugman, who is Jewish, eager to show his fealty to the political Left over any loyalty he has to the Jewish people, responded to the furor that has erupted over the anti-Semitic comments of Rep. Ilhan Omar by stating that the only anti-Semitism that frightens him is the anti-Semitism from the political Right. Krugman also used the opportunity to take a swipe at President Trump, tweeting, “There are three things in life that are certain: death, taxes (unless you're Donald Trump), and persistence of anti-Semitism. But only one brand of antisemitism scares me – and it's not on the left.”

Krugman’s warped sense of what constitutes dangerous anti-Semitism seems to largely be based on the supposition that Nazis hail from the political Right, a canard that the Left has propounded since World War II, and debunked by F.A. Hayek in his classic “The Road to Serfdom,” in which he called Nazism a “genuine socialist movement,” and Jonah Goldberg in his book “Liberal Fascism.”

Additionally, would Krugman consider Russian mass murderer Josef Stalin, an ardent communist who killed thousands of Jews, a man of the political Right? The attempt to say that anti-Semitism from the political Left is not a frightening phenomenon is a spurious one, and despite Krugman’s hard-core allegiance to the Left, his willful denial of reality and blind obedience to his movement is telling.
Omar Releases Statement Condemning Hate Without Apologizing for Her Anti-Semitism
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) and two other Democratic lawmakers released a joint statement following the House's passage of a resolution that condemns all kinds of hate, but it did not address her specific anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Omar, who was joined by Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Andre Carson (Ind.), posted the joint statement on Twitter touting the resolution as the "first time we have voted on a resolution condemning Anti-Muslim bigotry in our nation's history."

"We are tremendously proud to be part of a body that has put forth a condemnation of all forms of bigotry including anti-Semitism, racism, and white supremacy," they wrote. "At a time when extremism is on the rise, we must explicitly denounce religious intolerance of all kinds and acknowledge the pain felt by all communities. Our nation is having a difficult conversation and we believe this is great progress."


After Meghan's tears for Israel, Omar retweets post blasting 'View' star's late father, 'faux outrage'
U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was apparently unmoved Thursday by Meghan McCain's tearful remarks about her on "The View."

McCain had become emotional during the ABC talk show, discussing Omar's recent criticisms of Israel and its supporters. She said Omar's remarks were hurtful to many of her Jewish friends.

“It is very dangerous, very dangerous," McCain added, "and I think we collectively as Americans on both sides, what Ilhan Omar is saying is very scary to me. It’s very scary to a lot of people and I don’t think you have to be Jewish to recognize that.”

But instead of responding directly to McCain, Omar retweeted a post that criticized McCain for "faux outrage" and referred to past statements attributed to McCain's late father, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who died last August at age 81.

“Meghan’s late father literally sang ‘bomb bomb bomb Iran’ and insisted on referring to his Vietnamese captors as ‘g--ks'," read the post by Medhi Hasan, an "Intercept" columnist and Al Jazeera host. "He also, lest we forget, gave the world Sarah Palin. So a little less faux outrage over a former-refugee-turned-freshman-representative pls.”


Liz Cheney Slams 'Sham House Resolution Vote' Protecting Ilhan Omar
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) slammed House Democrats on Thursday over a "sham" House resolution vote condemning hate, saying that the vote avoided condemning Rep. Ilhan Omar's (D-MN) anti-Semitic remarks.

"Today’s resolution vote was a sham put forward by Democrats to avoid condemning one of their own and denouncing vile anti-Semitism," Cheney wrote in a statement provided to The Daily Wire. "While I stand whole heartedly against discrimination outlined in this resolution, the language before the House today did not address the issue that is front and center."

"After several days of infighting and a near-rebellion by rank-and-file Democrats, as well as a major last-minute revision, the House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan resolution that only indirectly condemned Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar's repeated 'anti-Semitic' and 'pernicious' comments -- without mentioning her by name," Fox News reported. "The final vote was 407 to 23, with 23 Republicans voting no, and all Democrats voting yes. Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King, who faced his own bipartisan blowback for comments purportedly defending white nationalists, voted present."

"Rep. Omar’s comments were wrong and she has proven multiple times that she embodies a vile, hate-filled, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel bigotry," Cheney continued. "She deserves to be rebuked, by name, and removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee so that there is no mistake about the values and priorities that the House stands for."
Engel (D): ‘Very Disappointed’ Democrats Didn’t Pass Separate Resolution Condemning Anti-Semitism
Rep. Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.) on Thursday said he's "very disappointed" with fellow Democrats in the House for not passing a standalone resolution to condemn the anti-Semitic rhetoric from freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.).

Engel, who is Jewish, was speaking on the House floor when he made his comments. While he said he would ultimately support the "fine resolution" that the Democrats wrote, he was not happy that the resolution didn't specifically address Omar's "hateful term."

"This resolution is a fine resolution and I will support it, but I am very disappointed that we weren't able to have a separate resolution to specifically condemn anti-Semitism and what our colleague said that really was a very hateful term," Engel said.

"I hope we can put everything together in this House. I know we can. I know people on both sides of the aisle want to work together and we want to stomp out any form of hatred, particularly anti-Semitism. I will continue to work with anybody who wants to do that," Engel continued.

The House voted on the resolution Thursday evening, passing it by a vote of 407-23. The vote was initially going to be earlier in the week, but Democrats were divided and started speaking out in support of Omar, one of two Muslim women in Congress. Some of the progressive members of Congress pressured the House leadership to expand the language to "opposing hate" on all sides.

"Whether from the political right, center, or left, bigotry, discrimination, oppression, racism, and imputations of dual loyalty threaten American democracy and have no place in American political discourse," the resolution reads.


Gohmert Blasts Dems’ Anti-Hate Resolution: Condemning Anti-Semitism ‘Should Never Be Watered Down’
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R., Texas) denounced the resolution introduced by House Democratic leaders condemning multiple forms of hatred in the wake of anti-Semitic comments made by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.).

Gohmert's remarks came during a speech on the floor of the House on Thursday prior to the vote on the resolution. He quoted the Book of Proverbs to condemn various forms of wickedness, and then explained why anti-Semitism needs special attention.

"What makes this so dangerous, and the reason I will vote against this resolution, is because we came here because of an anti-Semitic remark, and we came here to condemn anti-Semitism, but this resolution, as changed up over the last hour, now condemns just about everything. And the reason that is so dangerous is that anti-Semitism, hatred for the children of Israel, is a very special kind of hatred that should never be watered down," Gohmert said.

"There has never been a persecution of a people like the Jewish people from 1933 to 1945, over six million killed. And it started with little things: hateful remarks made about the children of Israel that grew and grew and, as if it was okay because it was made by somebody who had a grudge, it was let go. And it built until it led to the death of six million Jews, and we have to say ‘no, we will not let it go on.' And that's why I'll vote against it. It's watered down the sentiment," Gohmert continued.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.) also expressed disappointment with the resolution, saying he was "very disappointed we weren't able to have a separate resolution that condemns anti-Semitism."




Cenk Uygur Makes Outrageous Statement About Anti-Semitism, Gets Destroyed Online
On Thursday, Young Turks host Cenk Uygur, eager to distract from the furor over the anti-Semitic comments of Rep. Ilhan Omar, posited that the real anti-Semites Jews should be worried about were Evangelical Christians. He tweeted, “You know what's REAL anti-semitism? Right-wing Evangelical Christians supporting Israel because they think it will bring about the End Times where all of the Jews die. Worst anti-Semitism in the world!”

He has a point. How many times has the world witnessed Evangelical Christians running a theocratic state sworn to destroy the state of Israel? How many times have Evangelical Christians murdered Jews sleeping in their beds in Israel? How many Evangelical Christian suicide bombers have targeted innocent Jews over the decades? How many times have Evangelical Christians launched rockets from the east, north, or south of Israel intended to slaughter Jews in Israel? How many times have Evangelical Christians built camps of death all over a continent and gassed and murdered millions of Jews, including one million children? How many Evangelical Christians have had Russian Jews shot or sent to Siberia?

As Uygur would say, you can Google it.

The truth of the matter is that the Jewish people have no better friends than the Evangelical community; there is no stronger ally of the state of Israel outside the Jewish community than the Evangelical Christian community. A 2013 poll from the Pew Research Center found that 82% of white evangelicals believed that Israel was given to the Jews by God, which is a central tenet of the Jewish faith.
Jim Clyburn's defense: Ilhan Omar's experience is 'more personal' than Jews who had parents in the Holocaust
As Democrats line up to defend Rep. Ilhan Omar and come up with her excuses for her anti-Semitism, House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., tried to minimize her comments by arguing that she escaped violence in Somalia, so her experience was "more personal" than Jews who merely had parents survive the Holocaust.

The Hill reports, "Clyburn came to Omar’s defense Wednesday, lamenting that many of the media reports surrounding the recent controversy have omitted mentioning that Omar, who was born in Somalia, had to flee the country to escape violence and spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp before coming to the United States."

The article quotes Clyburn as saying, “There are people who tell me, ‘Well, my parents are Holocaust survivors.’ ‘My parents did this.’ It’s more personal with her ... I’ve talked to her, and I can tell you she is living through a lot of pain.”


Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke: 'Omar Most Important Member Of Congress!'
Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke praised Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) on Thursday amid her ongoing anti-Semitism scandal, calling her the most important person in Congress.

"Dr Duke & Eric Striker: By Defiance to Z.O.G. Ilhan Omar is NOW the most important Member of the US Congress!" Duke tweeted with a picture of Omar that had a smiley face covered with hearts.

On his website, a synopsis of Duke's podcast on Omar stated that Duke "heaped praise on Ilhan Omar (D-New Somalia) for being the one person in Congress willing to notice AIPAC and the 'dual' loyalty of many (((members of Congresss)))."

The three parentheses around the words "members of Congress," is an alt-right anti-Semitic trope used to identify and demonize people who are Jewish.
Ocasio-Cortez: AIPAC ‘Coming After’ Freshman Dems, Compares Israel Supporters to Iraq War Supporters
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) sent a fundraising email Thursday claiming the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC is "coming after" her and some of her progressive colleagues, comparing the consensus around the U.S.-Israel relationship to that around the Iraq War a decade ago.

Quoting a New York Times article where AIPAC activist predicted Ocasio-Cortez and fellow freshman anti-Israel Reps. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) "will not be around in several years," the email said, "it's official—AIPAC is coming after Alexandria, Ilhan, and Rashida.

"Rashida, Ilhan, and Alexandria have at times dared to question our foreign policy, and the influence of money in our political system. And now, lobbying groups across the board are working to punish them for it," the email said.

"Some members of Congress have even gone so far as to claim that ‘questioning support for the US-Israel relationship is unacceptable.’ But that’s not how our legislative process is supposed to work," the email went on. "Just a decade ago, it was ‘unquestionable’ to not support the war in Iraq. And we all saw what resulted from that lack of discussion and negotiation."


Deutch (D) Condemns Democratic Party’s Response to Anti-Semitism: ‘This Shouldn’t Be So Hard’
Rep. Ted Deutch (D., Fla.) asked fellow Democrats during an emotional floor speech Thursday to cease abetting anti-Semitism.

"Today should not be about politics. I didn't rise to be political," he began. "This is personal."

Deutch rose to protest Democrats' reluctance to directly and unequivocally recognize comments from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) as anti-Semitic.

"If there is anti-Semitism in your country, there is hatred that will ultimately permeate throughout society if it is not checked," he said. "I never thought I would need to explain that to my colleagues."

Deutch, who is Jewish, co-chairs the Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Anti-Semitism. The congressman has pushed for the rapid and direct condemnation of Omar's remarks. He was joined by Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) and Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.) in quickly and strongly condemning Omar's remarks. House leaders announced the chamber would vote on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism. Shortly after, however, the tide in the party turned.


Ilhan Omar Withdraws Support From Bill To Save The Earth After Learning That’s Where Israel Is (satire)
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal hit a snag when it lost the support of another freshman representative, Ilhan Omar. Omar had been an enthusiastic supporter of the Green New Deal and wanted to save the earth, but then she noticed something very disturbing when looking at a map of the earth: Earth is the planet on which Israel resides.

“You’ve been hypnotized by the Jews!” Omar accused a surprised Ocasio-Cortez. Omar then ripped up a copy of the Green New Deal. “This is just a plot to help Israel keep existing! Did AIPAC pay you off?”

Ocasio-Cortez was very apologetic, saying she hadn’t considered how her plan would affect Israel. She then vowed to change her plan so it might save the whole planet except where Israel resides.

“This is, like, a learning process,” Ocasio-Cortez later told reporters. “When I made the Green New Deal, I thought weather like storms and earthquakes were all caused by climate change, but now I’ve learned from Representative Omar that lots of that is actually from Jewish-controlled weather machines. So for the next version of the Green New Deal we will have to keep that in mind.”
Assyrians Massacred After Pelosi Leaves Them Out of Anti-Hate Resolution (satire)
“As soon as I read the resolution and saw we weren’t named, I knew we were in trouble,” an Assyrian man living in southeast Turkey told The Mideast Beast. “Within minutes, our village was overrun by terrorists and suddenly-hostile neighbors.”

The carnage was not constrained to the region, as even in the diaspora Assyrians found themselves under attack.

“I’ve never considered hurting anyone, since I thought violence against any group was bad,” explained one German man arrested assaulting his Assyrian coworker. “But when I read the Democrats’ resolution and it named every group but them, I thought it must be okay to hurt them.”

While apologizing for the oversight, Pelosi noted that the situation could have been much worse.

“Imagine if we only put Jews in the resolution?” she said.


Lament Berlin Wall, support rockets on Israel: Corbyn's inner circle
“Antisemitism is intimately related to their politics, to their organization and to the way they now operate in the Labour Party”, said former Labour MP Joan Ryan, leaving her party to enter the new Independent Group.

How has anti-Semitism entered Labour? The Times' Daniel Finkelstein partially explained it by telling the ideas of the inner circle of Jeremy Corbyn, such as Andrew Murray and Seumas Milne.

Murray, Corbyn's chief advisor, condemned “the counter-revolutions of 1989 and subsequently, which swept away most of the working-class states”. For “working-class states” Murray means communist Czechoslovakia and Poland. The fall of the Berlin Wall? “A historic setback for human progress”. According to Murray, “the greatest danger the world faces is not terrorism”, as he said in 2015. “It is imperialism”.

Murray, who was the head of Unite (the country's largest trade union) and the British Communist Party, told a Stop the War rally that Israel is “digging its grave”. Murray expressed “solidarity with the heroic people of Gaza” while it was launching missiles on Israel.

Israel is seen by the British opposition party as the embodiment of imperialism.
Labour Mayoral Candidate Said Zionism is as 'Foul' as Nazism
Mansfield Labour are having a hard time with their local Mayoral campaign for the May elections. Their initial candidate, Paul Bradshaw, quit in January, having been forced out by the hard left of the party. A new significantly less moderate candidate, Sean McCallum, was selected on Wednesday evening…

Guido can reveal that McCallum is the author of deeply anti-Semitic posts on his personal Facebook account. In a bizarre rant defending the comments that got Ken Livingstone suspended from the Labour Party, he equated the genocidal evil of the Nazi regime with the existence of Israel as a country “nazism & zionism are equally foul.” This is going even further than Ken Livingstone did…


Columbia Unmoored: Academics Appropriate the Holocaust to Bash Israel
Where is the line between criticizing Israel’s policies and anti-Semitism? Look no further than two late-January events at Columbia University’s Middle East Institute (MEI) that demonstrated how far Middle East studies academics are willing to go to promote anti-Semitism under the guise of anti-Zionism. Together, they provide a snapshot of the intellectual and moral decline of contemporary academia.

The first event was a panel discussion based on The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History, a book published last year by Columbia University Press. Panelists drew a hollow connection between the slaughter of six million Jews in the Holocaust to the displacement of roughly 600,000 Palestinians at Israel’s founding in 1948 — known in Arabic as the “Nakba,” or catastrophe. Yet they omitted the contemporaneous dislocation of over 900,000 Jews from the Arab countries where their families had lived for thousands of years.

Preaching to a like-minded audience of around eighty, the speakers took pains to shield themselves from charges of antisemitism or moral relativism: “We are not claiming that they are equally equivalent events,” declared Hebrew University Professor Amos Goldberg.

This strategic disclaimer was repeated several times throughout the discussion, even as panelists consistently portrayed the two disparate events as morally equivalent.
California Campuses Take Lead Against Israel Boycott
In California, speeches by Israelis are regularly disrupted or shut down. Jewish students have been stopped at mock military checkpoints set up by Palestinian students and their allies. And student government representatives have been subjected to intimidation.

But backlash is coming. President Melvin Oliver of Pitzer College in Claremont vetoed a faculty vote to end an exchange program with Haifa University, saying it is plain wrong, discriminatory and inconsistent to boycott Israel so long as Pitzer, along with many other American colleges, "promotes exchanges and study abroad in countries with significant human rights abuses." "China, for example, has killed, tortured and imprisoned up to 1 million people in Tibet and utterly obliterated the Tibetan nation. China currently has 1 million Muslims imprisoned in 're-education' camps. Why would we not suspend our program with China?"

As Oliver implied, Israel is singled out among all nations for student and faculty protests because it is primarily a Jewish state. And one definition of anti-Semitism is singling out Jews or Israel to be punished for supposed but unproven actions that have been documented on a much larger or much more brutal scale in many other countries.

No college faculty, for example, has even considered voting to boycott Saudi Arabia for its state-sanctioned assassination and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But Israel is excoriated for defensive acts.
New Yorker Portrays UC Berkeley's Hatem Bazian as a Victim of 'Counter-BDS Organizations'
The once-venerable New Yorker is portraying UC Berkeley lecturer and anti-Israel activist Hatem Bazian as an "outspoken champion of Palestinian causes" who has been victimized by "counter-B.D.S. organizations" and in particular, a now-defunct "private Israeli intelligence firm called Psy-Group."

Reporter Adam Entous dredges up an incident from May 2017---by connecting it, however thinly, to the Mueller investigation into President Trump---in which fliers were left on the windshield of Bazian's car accusing him of connections to terrorism.

Despite acknowledging that "it is unclear who left the fliers," Entous takes the opportunity to attack organizations that have exposed the unsavory connections of Bazian and his academic cohorts via publicly available material. He singles out Canary Mission and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD)'s Jonathan Schanzer, who testified before Congress in 2016 that the group Bazian founded, American Muslims for Palestine, has provided funding for Hamas (a recent Israeli government report did the same).

Entous concludes by taking Bazian's word that both these substantive allegations and concerns over his well-documented history of spreading "classic anti-Semitism" are nothing more than "intimidation tactics." A more fawning portrait and a less deserving subject would be hard to find.
Swarthmore College Students Endorse BDS Following Campaign Calling for Palestinian State ‘From the River to the Sea’
Student leaders in Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania voted to endorse a controversial boycott campaign targeting Israel on Sunday, after initially rejecting it three weeks ago.

In a closed meeting, the Student Government Organization voted in favor of a resolution introduced by members of the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) club, which supports the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign. The measure calls on the college and its Board of Managers to divest from companies accused of involvement in violations of international law in Israel and the Palestinian territories, ranging from American aerospace company Boeing to Israel’s largest bank, Bank Hapoalim.

In a message sent this week to the Swarthmore student body, as well as the school’s president, chairman, and Board of Managers, SGO expressed that the vote was “not a repudiation of the Jewish faith or of our fellow Jewish and Israeli students.”

The email cited students from the newly formed anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) club, who claimed that divestment was “not in any way a measure taken against the existence of the state of Israel. This vote only condemns the human rights violations occurring in Palestine due to the Israeli occupation.”


Israeli Researchers Show How Engineered Cells Can be Transplanted with Fewer Complications
Skin grafts are modern medicine miracles, saving the lives of people suffering from severe tissue damage. Unfortunately, they are also complicated to perform and carry the risk of infection, rejection and a whole lot of pain.

This is why tissue engineering was invented. Instead of using the patient’s own skin or the skin of others, lab-grown tissue is used to replace or regenerate the damaged area. This too is a very complicated process, but one that research students from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have just helped make a little simpler.

Engineered tissue combines cells from the patient’s body with scaffold biomaterials that act as 3D templates to guide its growth. For the tissue to be transplantable, it needs to have blood vessels created to bring in oxygen and nutrients. However, the vascularization process can lead to thrombosis (clotting or coagulation) in the graft tissue.

Shahar Ben-Shaul, a biomedical engineering doctoral student at the Technion, set out to study whether transplanting more mature engineered vessels to integrate with the patient’s tissues could speed up the process without causing thrombosis in the grafts.
Tel Aviv trials ‘zombie’ traffic lights to save smartphone users from themselves
The city of Tel Aviv is testing out new “zombie” traffic lights, designed to save smartphone users too absorbed to look up and see the signals for themselves.

The phenomenon of pedestrians getting injured because they walk into traffic while focused on their phones has apparently caught the attention of Tel Aviv’s engineering department.

Bright LED light strips between two pylons have been set into the sidewalks at the intersection of David Bloch Street and Ibn Gvirol, turning red or green in sync with the traffic lights, Channel 12 News reported Tuesday.

Engineers hope that if smartphone users are already looking down, they might actually notice the bright lights on the floor.

For those who still can’t take they eyes off their phone screen, the strip will turn green when the traffic light changes to let them know they can now cross the intersection.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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