Activist and author Peter Feld has written the article I wish I had written about the absolutely ridiculous claims of anti-Semitism being leveled at Rep. Ihlan Omar. It’s called No, Ihlan Omar is not Anti-Semitic for Calling Out AIPAC, and it was published today in the Jewish Daily Forward. For those who do not know, the Forward is a socialist newspaper that has been published continuously in New York since 1897. It is one of the best sources for progressive Jewish opinion, and is invaluable when it comes to understanding Israel.
Here are my favorite excerpts.
Like “hypnotized,” Omar’s comment on “Benjamins” was said to employ the anti-Semitic trope of secret Jewish control. Much has been written about this awful demonization of Jews, about how it has been repeatedly used to falsely depict one of history’s most marginalized and oppressed peoples as all-powerful.
The problem is, all lobbies, by definition, are designed to exert secret control over policy, using money. That’s what they do. For example, we’re just now learning about a Russian plot to launder money through the NRA and help Republicans. Good times.
And so, unless you want to deny that there even is an Israel lobby, it can’t be off limits to point out that it works in secret and uses money to bring about policy outcomes.
IOW, the criticism of anti-Semitism is really no more than a ploy to make it off-limits even to suggest that pro-Israel lobbying, including the spending of lots of money, is a bad thing.
Feld also tells the truth about AIPAC:
For crucial decades before the rise of Christian Zionism, the lobby that produced wall-to-wall congressional support for Israel was AIPAC. Like Omar, academicians Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer were slandered as anti-Semites for merely writing about ‘the Israel lobby,’ though this is no longer tenable and the critics have mostly backed off.
But if you were in the right audience, AIPAC was very up front about its influence. In 1988, at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco — yes, representing the Dukakis campaign at an AIPAC luncheon is a thing I have done in this life — I heard an AIPAC speaker boast unabashedly about AIPAC’s vast influence.
But now it was time to reward Israel’s friends, he told the crowd. Lobbies, he joked in what became a widely repeated saying, are like mushrooms: they grow best in the dark; you will not hear about all our successes.
No one called him anti-Semitic.
Feld points out how the Israel double-standard harms this country.
And it cannot be anti-Semitic to say that a lobby that spends large sums of money and boasts (at least to its own supporters) of its influence, is influential through money. (If you think members of Congress don’t care about “benjamins,” you haven’t watched any of them dance for a $5000 PAC check like it’s “Goodfellas” and Joe Pesci is shooting at their feet.) Israel also exerts influence in the donations of wealthy individuals like Sheldon Adelson who has given the GOP a reported $100 million and was rewarded by Trump with the Jerusalem embassy move.
It’s AIPAC, not the evangelicals, who made the Israel Anti-Boycott Act a legislative priority and got 292 House and 69 Senate cosponsors from both parties to place protecting Israel from criticism above their own constituents’ constitutional rights to free speech.
Finally, points out Feld, the times they are a’changin’, and thanks be for that!
New members like Omar and Tlaib are shaking up Congress like it has has never been shaken. This includes criticisms of Israel that have been almost entirely suppressed in our political conversation.
There are plenty of Jews, like me, whose beliefs are voiced by Omar, not AIPAC. And this time, we will not let our leaders be taken down by accusations that they are anti-Semitic for supporting Palestinian rights, including BDS, or for calling attention to the influence wielded behind the scenes by lobbies like AIPAC.
Count me in as one of those Jews who aren’t going to be pushed around anymore by AIPAC-style Zionists who demand total, blind loyalty to everything the state of Israel does. They do not speak for me, and they do not speak for most Jews, either.