Last night Glenn Greenwald seized on the news that House minority leader Kevin McCarthy intends to investigate two Muslim congresswomen, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, over their criticisms of Israel and remarked —
 

It’s stunning how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans

Ilhan Omar responded with her usual pithiness.

And set off a firestorm of criticism. Batya Ungar-Sargon of the Forward led the rush against Omar for alleged anti-Semitism.
 

“Would love to know who @IlhanMN thinks is paying American politicians to be pro-Israel, though I think I can guess. Bad form, Congresswoman. That’s the second anti-Semitic trope you’ve tweeted.

Omar then responded with one word: “AIPAC!”

Ungar-Sargon presumed to speak on behalf of American Jews.  “Please learn how to talk about Jews in a non-anti-Semitic way. Sincerely, American Jews.”

The Democratic Party establishment is upset. Chelsea Clinton retweeted Ungar-Sargon during the Grammys.
 

Co-signed as an American. We should expect all elected officials, regardless of party, and all public figures to not traffic in anti-Semitism.

Howard Dean said that Omar went “too far.” He echoes NY Congressman Jerrold Nadler (per Sam Stein): “It is deeply disappointing and disturbing to hear Representative Ilhan Omar’s (MN) choice of words in her exchange with a journalist yesterday, wherein she appears to traffic in old anti-Semitic tropes about Jews and money.”

A lot of others have joined in the shaming of Omar. The story has been on CNN and is trending on twitter, and Haaretz has covered it too. “That is a reprehensible response,” said Jane Eisner formerly of the Forward. Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL agreed, saying Omar was echoing a “tired anti-Semitic trope about Jews and money.”
 

Words matter Rep. @IlhanMN. Anti-Semitism is on the rise in the US and abroad. The use of this tired anti-Semitic trope about Jews and money is inappropriate and upsetting. As Americans and Jews, we expect our politicians to condemn bigotry, not fuel it.

Ungar Sargon continued her criticisms of Omar as an anti-Semite:
 

If your “criticism of AIPAC” can be replaced with a cartoon octopus with a hook nose, you need a lesson in Jewish history. And if you’re out here saying “Yeah, using the word Benjamins was bad BUT” you’re abetting the normalization of anti-Semitism by an elected official…
To all the people in my mentions and DMs who think that S1 was the work of AIPAC: I have a bridge I want to sell you. Either way, OF COURSE it’s possible to critique AIPAC et al in a non-anti-Semitic way. This ain’t it, chief.

The remarkable thing is the pushback that the anti-Semitism police have gotten from journalists and experts on US policy. AIPAC is simply too important a force in US politics for sensible people to take the criticism of Omar for merely speaking out, lying down. Khaled Elgindy of Brookings:
 

It seems I’m in the market for a bridge. Please enlighten us on AIPAC’s non-influence in Congress.

Mitchell Plitnick said Ungar Sargon doesn’t speak for him. So did Ira Glunts. Michael Tracey responds:
 

Ignore the histrionic idiots making false insinuations. Rational people understand that AIPAC and allied donors have outsized influence on Congress, and seek to dictate policy as it relates to Israel.

Ali Abunimah:
 

Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is under fierce attack from Chelsea Clinton and other Republican and Democratic establishment figures for voicing a fundamental truth: much of Congress is muzzled when it comes to Israel by the powerful lobby group AIPAC.

Yousef Munayyer directs people to AIPAC’s website.
 

Uh, AIPAC is pretty explicit about how it acts as a vehicle for funding for members of Congress. It is right on its website

His link is to an AIPAC Club where members must spend $2500 a year on pro-Israel politics.

Remi Brulin links to Tom Friedman’s column on the topic that we have often cited:
 

Here is how Tom Friedman phrased it in 2011: “I hope that Israel’s prime minister understands that standing ovation he got in Congress this year wasn’t for his politics. That ovation was bought & paid for by the Israel lobby.”

Anshel Pfeffer of Haaretz correctly says that the Jeremy Corbyn argument has come to the U.S. but also accuses Omar of anti-Semitism; and former Obama ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro says he is right. Pfeffer:
 

In the space of just 6 hours the whole Corbyn shitshow c.2015 has crossed the pond. The right-wing is scandalized. Jews are hurt. The soft-left is hoping she didn’t really mean it. The hard-left is in “criticizing Israel isn’t antisemitic” mode and antisemites having a field-day.

Mairav Zonszein says that Omar is right. “’Democratic Congresswoman’s words suggesting money is behind pro-Israel stances…’. That is exactly right though.”
 

Stephanie Schriock, president of Emily’s List
 

Here is my report on Stephanie Schriock of the pro-choice group Emily’s List describing the role of AIPAC in scripting Congressional positions on Israel for donations (at J Street three years ago). “Because this is how we raise money” from the “Jewish community.”
 

I started as a finance director. I worked for candidates in the 90’s as their finance director. And I would come on a congressional race, I am a twenty-something kid who also knows nothing beyond the state borders, let alone overseas, and you thought about where you are going to go to raise the money that you needed to raise to win a race. And you went to labor, you went to the choice community, and you went to the Jewish community. But before you went to the Jewish community, you had a conversation with the lead AIPAC person in your state and they made it clear that you needed a paper on Israel. And so you called all of your friends who already had a paper on Israel – that was designed by AIPAC – and we made that your paper.
This was before there was a campaign manager, or a policy director or a field director because you got to raise money before you do all of that. I have written more Israel papers that you can imagine. I’m from Montana. I barely knew where Israel was until I looked at a map, and the poor campaign manager would come in, or the policy director, and I’d be like, ‘Here is your paper on Israel. This is our policy.’ We’ve sent it all over the country because this is how we raise money. … This means that these candidates who were farmers, school teachers, or businesswomen, ended up having an Israel position without having any significant conversations with anybody [but AIPAC]…

Sitting on the dais of the the Sixth and I Synagogue in Washington, Roger Cohen asked Schriock what would happen if a candidate didn’t take the AIPAC position on Israel?
 

“You thought that the money was going to be gone.”

Just going to dry up? Cohen said. “Yes,” Schriock said. These are candidates, she said, who “really have to get those $5000 PAC checks from the pro-Israel PAC in St. Louis.”

Schriock said that J Street’s arrival had finally created another position on Israel contra AIPAC.

J Street was for the Iran Deal, AIPAC was opposed. J Street was against S.1, the anti-boycott legislation passed by the Senate last week; AIPAC was for it. But to be clear, J Street opposes Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) which Omar supports. And J Street supports continued aid to Israel at the tune of $3.8 billion a year. I hope “tune” is not an anti-Semitic trope!

In her courage and plainness, Omar has brought important issues about the role of the Israel lobby to a national discussion that even Walt and Mearsheimer were not able to catalyze. We should all be grateful.

Thanks to James North and Scott Roth.
 

The post Ilhan Omar says AIPAC influences Congress using money and Israel supporters erupt in fury appeared first on SabrangIndia.

I’m proud of American Jews mobilizing to fight Islamophobia. But to fully fight hate, U.S. Jews must confront the role pro-Israel organizations continue to play in spreading anti-Muslim bigotry.

http://972mag.com/what-u-s-jews-must-do-to-fight-anti-muslim-bigotry/115113/
 
Anti-Muslim rhetoric coming from American lawmakers and presidential candidates reached a fevered pitch earlier this month when, standing before a cheering crowd aboard the USS Yorktown in South Carolina, Donald Trump called for a “total and complete” ban on Muslims entering the United States. This call came on the heels of Trump and Ben Carson calling for mosques to be monitored, Senator Marco Rubio suggesting that places where Muslim-Americans gather be shut down, and hundreds of lawmakers voting to turn away Syrian refugees.

These anti-Muslim policies, and the Islamophobia at their core, no longer reside on the fringes in America. They have seeped into the mainstream. Today, a majority of conservative voters support them, and poll numbers often rise for those Republican politicians who choose to double down by exploiting anti-Muslim sentiments. Such policies — and the hateful incitement politicians use when proposing them — are inspiring horrific hate crimes against Muslim-Americans. In the week after Trump’s Muslim ban comments, a California mosque was torched, an Arizona mosque was vandalized, two Muslim women in Florida were violently attacked, a Muslim deli owner in New York was beaten, and a Muslim child in Georgia was asked by a teacher, “Do you have a bomb in your backpack?”

I have been heartened in recent weeks to see many Jewish leaders and pro-Israel institutions, shocked by the historical reverberations, stand up for Muslims under attack. After all, in 1939 it was Jews fleeing Hitler who were demonized and blocked from reaching America’s shores. This stuff hits close to home for American Jews. Which is why 11 Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), recently signed a letter to Congress declaring that “to turn our back on [Syrian] refugees would be to betray our nation’s core values.” It is also why the ADL was quick to blast Trump last week.

However, such public pronouncements, as wonderful as they have been, conceal a troubling truth which the institutional Jewish community and U.S. Jews invested in Israel must confront if we are to root out anti-Muslim bigotry: in the post-9/11 era, pro-Israel donors, institutions and the Israel lobby have often fueled the very Islamophobia now suddenly catching fire in America, doing so as a strategy for smearing Palestinians.

Promoting and showcasing anti-Muslim bigots has become a troubling pattern for the Israel lobby, particularly its most powerful arm: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). One example occurred in 2007, when Pastor John Hagee – one of the loudest anti-Muslim voices on the Christian right – was invited to give a keynote address at AIPAC’s policy conference. Not only has Hagee engaged in Holocaust revisionism, but his Islamophobia prompted the Center for American Progress (CAP) to highlight him as a prime example of anti-Muslim hatred fomenting in evangelical circles. Even John McCain rejected his endorsement in 2008, despite the huge potential gains. And yet, crowds cheered him at AIPAC, where he has been given a platform.

Another example is Steve Emerson, who has been invited to speak at AIPAC’s policy conferences multiple times. CAP identified Emerson as one of the five most influential “misinformation experts” in America. Head of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Emerson is best known for creating outlandish claims to support the theory that Muslim-Americans are plotting jihad in this country, such as the one repeated by a Republican congressman on Fox News that “80 to 85 percent of mosques … are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists.” With AIPAC giving platforms to such purveyors of hate, it is no surprise that the organization has remained silent as Syrian refugees are smeared and anti-Muslim bigotry runs rampant.

Of course, organizations are influenced by those who financially support them. And a deep dive into the world of Jewish, pro-Israel donors reveals that some of the most influential people spreading anti-Muslim bigotry are funded by American Jews with deep connections to the Israel lobby and pro-Israel organizations. This includes the Jewish Communal Fund, which has supported Pamela Geller and the Clarion Fund, and former AIPAC board member Nina Rosenwald, who has given millions to some of the most notorious bigots. This includes Daniel Pipes, who has made spreading Islamophobic misinformation a multi-million dollar profession as head of the Middle East Forum, where he has notoriously argued that Muslim-Americans should be racially profiled and denied constitutionally protected rights.

Why are pro-Israel organizations and donors fueling anti-Muslim bigotry when most American Jews reject such hate? Troublingly, too many Jewish institutions see propagating Islamophobia as a way of supporting Israel. Matt Duss, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (full disclosure: FMEP is a +972 donor), once wrote that for some, “support for the Jewish state is a zero-sum contest between favoring Israel and favoring Arabs and Muslims. For too many American Jews, smearing Islam is seen as a legitimate expression of Zionism.”
I’m proud of American Jews mobilizing to fight the Islamophobia being fomented by figures like Trump. However, to fully fight such hate, U.S. Jews must confront the role pro-Israel organizations have played – and continue to play – in spreading Islamophobia as a zero-sum justification for smearing Palestinians. Otherwise, even as U.S. Jews publicly fight the purveyors of hate from without, by giving cover from within to those spreading hate, not only will Muslim-Americans continue to be endangered, so too will those Palestinians being occupied and oppressed by Israel.
For they are the true target.

David Harris-Gershon is a writer for Tikkun and author of ‘What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?‘

The post What U.S. Jews must do to fight anti-Muslim bigotry appeared first on SabrangIndia.