Ilhan Omar and AIPAC overreach

While the GOP is still under the control of the pro-Israeli lobby, it appears that the Democratic Party is slipping out of their grasp. It started with the anti-BDS bill.

Some six of the seven leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for president voted against a bill that will tackle the anti-BDS movement in America last week. The bill, which passed in the Senate by 77 to 23, was opposed almost solely by Democrats.

However, that was nothing compared to the blow-up over Ilhan Omar's comments.

House Democrats on Wednesday postponed indefinitely a vote on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism after a contentious meeting in which some new members confronted leaders over their push to rebuke Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

In the party’s weekly closed meeting, Democrats protested the way Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leaders tried to rush out a resolution this week responding to Omar’s latest remark about Israel. Omar last week suggested the Jewish state’s supporters are pushing lawmakers to pledge “allegiance” to a foreign country.

That forced Democratic leaders to respond, but their draft of the resolution condemning anti-Semitism angered Omar’s fellow freshmen and their liberal supporters. Pelosi had already said the measure would be broadened to decry anti-Muslim bias. But that didn’t quiet the ranks, and the party’s first major dissension broke out in an uncomfortable confrontation, according to three officials familiar with the episode, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private matters.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have all come out in support of Omar, and now the Big Gun, Bernie Sanders, has come to her defense.

"Anti-Semitism is a hateful and dangerous ideology which must be vigorously opposed in the United States and around the world. We must not, however, equate anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of the right-wing, Netanyahu government in Israel."

Sanders, besides being immensely popular, is also Jewish, who lost family in the Holocaust.

AIPAC has a dilemma. Their normal SOP is to target politicians who don't obey for political defeat. They are very good at it.

But in a recent article in The Nation, M.J. Rosenberg, who worked for Aipac in the 1980s and is now a critic of the organization, described how “Aipac’s political operation is used precisely as Representative Omar suggested,” including during policy conferences, when members gather “in side rooms, nominally independent of the main event,” to raise money and “decide which candidate will get what.”
...In 1982, Aipac activists organized to oust Paul Findley, an Illinois House member who had embraced the Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat. The To Protect Our Heritage PAC, run by Aipac activists in Skokie, Ill., backed Richard J. Durbin, according to Marc Sommer, a PAC official.

Two years later, Aipac activists mobilized to replace Senator Charles Percy, then the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a backer of a deal allowing the sale of sophisticated military planes called Awacs to Saudi Arabia, with the Democrat Paul Simon.

AIPAC even has the power to intimidate presidents.
But targeting all of the most popular Democratic politicians at a time when progressives and young people are questioning our alliance with Israel? Even if AIPAC was successful in defeating all of them, how do you think young Democrats would take that?

Democratic support siding from 49% to 43% approaches the lowest level of Democratic partiality toward Israel since 2005, added Gallup. Republican support for Israel in the conflict hit an all-time high of 87% in 2018 and dropped to 76% today.

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On several twitter feeds including Hannity. They've all been shadow banned. You can read about AIPAC's dark undrrbelly of espionage, heroin dealing, organized crime and controlling US politicians here: https://penspages.wordpress.com

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snoopydawg's picture

@Battle of Blair Mountain

Some snippets from your essay:

A group calling itself “Americans for Victory Over Terrorism” sponsors the teach-ins, and the Bruin Republicans, UCLA’s campus Republicans organization, co-sponsored Wednesday night’s event.The group was founded by former Education Secretary William Bennett, who took part in Wednesday’s event along with Paul Bremer, a U.S. ambassador during the Reagan administration and the former chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism.
....
The enemy in this war is
not “terrorism”…but militant Islam
….Afghanistan constitutes just one front in World War IV, and the battles
there just one campaign….The immediate choice lies before the U.S. government in regard to Iran….The overthrow of the first theocratic revolutionary
Muslim state and its replacement by a moderate or secular government, however, would be no less important a victory in this war than the annihilation of bin Laden…Second, the U.S. should continue to target regimes that sponsor terrorism. Iraq is the obvious candidate, having not only helped al Qaeda, but attacked Americans directly (including an assassination attempt against the first President Bush) and developed weapons of mass destruction…Third, the U.S. must mobilize in earnest…the beginning of a desperately needed “transformation” of the American military…

First off this shows once again how many ex president's administration members are still involved with our government and its foreign policies. And how long this war of terror has been going on/happening. Secondly it's very hard to stop an enemy when they keep getting support from the people who are fighting them, but then that's the point of the military industrial complex isn't it?

You might consider essaying this.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Looks like the democratic party is only for women and POC if they support neocon foreign policy, and the class structures of neoliberal capitalism. I wonder if the democratic leadership maybe realized that they and the cronies may actually lose a decent sized chunk of black and progressive voters.

As one commentator said, or was it the Onion. AIPAC used its power to show people how really powerless they are.

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Centaurea's picture

@MrWebster @MrWebster

wrote a piece on it.

Israel Lobby Rebuts Omar's Claims About Its Immense Influence By Exerting Its Immense Influence

In response to criticisms made by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar that US political leaders have too much allegiance to Israel and its lobbying groups, House Democrats have put forward an entire House resolution in accordance with demands made by AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League.
[...]

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/israel-lobby-refutes-omars-claims-abo...

In her article, Johnstone quoted a tweet from Glenn Greenwald:

“I hope @AIPAC isn’t too angry that it took Democratic House leaders almost 48 whole hours to do what they’re told to condemn their own member and will instead be understanding that it was a weekend and that’s what caused the delay,” snarked journalist Glenn Greenwald in response to the news of the House resolution.

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@MrWebster
That term does not need to exist. Call it what it is: Nationalism, racism, sexism, hate speech, and fascist groupthink savagery. It makes no difference who does it to whom, it is not just immoral for superficial reasons but a proven fallacy on the epistemic level itself.

I guess it's no accident that it's tied up with Likud Israel's monstrous (not to mention suicidally stupid) hypocrisy, and with the growing plague of "victim culture" where having been abused sanctions the abuse of innocent third parties, in violation of what EVERY Child Services agent, abuse counselor, battery-shelter manager, and clinical psychologist must surely know by heart and by heartbreak.

I wish I could find that article I found where media-friendly 'white" supremacist Richard Spencer marveled that the "privilege theory" crowd is basically "like a photographic negative of a white supremacist", and looked forward to 'flipping' them - which I believe him to be right on the money about. Taking the other side in a dualistic mentality is the ultimate vindicator of the side you're "against", so long as you're consenting to the basic cosmology (e.g. Satanism is necessarily just another branch of Abrahamism). This is also what's wrong with neo-feminism, of course, which I see as being supremely regressive and self-devouring; all it's been doing is RESURRECTING the founding engine of Western sexism: The Evil Yin-Yang of "damsel in distress VS demonic male". You can't leave the kitchen without stepping off the pedestal, and people who'd bought into 'The Secrets of the Learned Elders of Patriarchy', shall we say, are panicking at what HAD, not long ago at all, been the glorious and welcome crumbling of the very concept of "gender" as a meaningful entity and not just a euphemism for 'sex'.

ALL nationalism is right-wing, I say; just the right-wing of different groups - so while neo-Nazis ought not be allowed to disguise themselves with the term "alternative right", I further claim that this lot that's been popping up the last 5-ish years ought not be allowed to AVOID the very same label; it is literally what they are.

"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."
- Albert Einstein

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Cassiodorus's picture

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Pricknick's picture

It's a wonderful thing to see.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@Pricknick We're supposed to BE Team Chaos to the evil GOP's Team Order, and always were.

Chaos can bring Perdition, true, but without it, there can be only Oblivion - and only the delusion of Order can bring Damnation.

This, I am of the conclusion, is all part of a necessary leap to the next stage of human evolution; instincts and behaviors that had helped early humans survive have gone rancid, and are now the very things destroying the world. It's the Anthropocene, now, and we have it within us to be gods - but we must at long last act the part and transcend the fetters of "human nature", lest we be overtaken by the consequences of our own burgeoning power like the cyanobacteria of eons past.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Pricknick's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat
Yet, I'm of firm belief that there will be no evolution of the human.
All of the the crossroads lead to non existence.
I will not weep alone at the failure.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@Pricknick ...then you may at least be consoled by what is actually fair to guarantee that, even if the near future is mass-hecatomb of horrible disaster, such destruction is not going to be omniversal. There will be survivors, and it need not be so hopelessly bleak as you suggest.

While we're kind of hoping to do better than this, that IS, on the most brutal Darwinian level, how evolution works anyways. It wouldn't be the first mass-extinction our beautiful world's survived.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Pricknick's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

There will be survivors

Very possible that some life will continue. If humans are included, no life is possible.
And I never look at it as hopelessly bleak. Our beautiful world, as you call it, has a few billion to go with or without us.
Peace is mine.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

YAYYY Rep. Omar!
YAYYY Minnesota for electing her and Keith!

YAYYY Big Gun Bernie!

YAYYY O-C (D.) and the others for taking the right side!

YAYYY Democrats not being totally lost!

YAYYY the big smoking obsidian-tar-monster claw-like hand finally bursting out of the ground to collect on Bibi's debt!

YAYYY nothing but lots and lots of confusion for real anti-Semites!

YAAAYYYYYYY SOME GOOD FUCKING NEWS AROUND HERE!!!

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Cassiodorus's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat The idea is to keep looking for a way forward.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

orlbucfan's picture

basic common sense! Rec'd!!

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Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

k9disc's picture

spot:
Smack dab between moderate and conservative Republicans.

“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

Sen. Cave Schemer

Mission accomplished.

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@Cassiodorus

Wait...how did this not go under @Cassiodorus ?

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!