The Education of Ilhan Omar

Outspoken rookie Democrat congressperson, Ilhan Omar, has just had an opinion piece - We must apply our universal values to all nations. Only then will we achieve peace - published in the Washington Post on March 17. Unfortunately, it's really little more than a collection of imperial and liberal Zionist cliches.

Some excerpts:

"I witnessed how our continuous involvement in foreign conflicts - even those with the best of intentions - can damage our reputation abroad."

Since when has imperialism, US or otherwise, ever had good intentions?

"Valuing human rights... means applying the same standards to our friends and our enemies. We do not have the credibility to support those fighting for human rights in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua if we do not also support those fighting for human rights in Honduras, Guatemala and Brazil. Our criticisms of oppression and regional instability caused by Iran are not legitimate if we do not hold Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to the same standards. And we cannot turn a blind eye to repression in Saudi Arabia - a country that is consistently ranked among the worst of the human rights defenders."

"... those fighting for human rights in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua... " = US proxies for regime change.

There is no sign of any awareness here of the US-engineered coups in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954) and Honduras (2009), and their ongoing impact in those countries. Nor do the US wars of regime change in Iraq, Libya and Syria rate a mention.

"This vision also applies to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. US support for Israel has a long history. The founding of Israel 70 years ago was built on the Jewish people's connection to their historical homeland, as well as the urgency of establishing a nation in the wake of the horror of the Holocaust and the centuries of anti-Semitic oppression leading up to it. Many of the founders of Israel were themselves refugees who survived indescribable horrors."

Omar's swallowed a Zionist primer here. To clarify briefly:

*There are Jews, a faith community, but no such entity as "the Jewish people."

*Palestine is not the historical homeland of this Zionist concoction. Palestine is the homeland, first and foremost, of the dispossessed Palestinian Arab people, whether they be in exile, under military occupation, or just hanging on as second-class citizens in what is billed as the 'Jewish' state.

*Israel was not a product of the Holocaust, but rather the result of a determined, settler-colonial project, run by Zionist fanatics given a foothold in Palestine by British imperialism in World War I.

*The "founders of Israel," such as David Ben-Gurion, were not "refugees who survived indescribable horror." Rather, they were seasoned Zionist ideologues and operatives who perpetrated the "indescribable horror" of ethnic cleansing on the indigenous Palestinian population from 1948-9. Ben-Gurion, for example, the architect of the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, was a Polish Jew who migrated to Ottoman Palestine in 1906.

"We must acknowledge that this is also the historical homeland of Palestinians. And without a state, the Palestinian people live in a state of permanent refugeehood and displacement. This, too, is a refugee crisis, and they, too, deserve freedom and dignity. A balanced, inclusive approach to the conflict recognizes the shared desire for security and freedom of both peoples. I support a two-state solution, with internationally recognized borders, which allows for both Israelis and Palestinians to have their own sanctuaries and self-determination. This has been official bipartisan US policy across two decades and has been supported by each of the most recent Israeli and Palestinian leaders, as well as the consensus of the Israeli security establishment... "

OFFS, the two-state mantra... trotted out by every hack Western politician on the planet, including our own.

So what is going on here?

Essentially, Omar is in the process of being made aware that in the US Israel is not a foreign policy issue, but a domestic one. The process began when she backtracked from her factually impeccable comment that US politicians were essentially in the pay of the Israel lobby, tweeting that "Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes."

Just who these "Jewish allies and colleagues" are we do not know, but one can be forgiven for thinking that they are unlikely to be anti-Zionists.

The pressure on Omar to conform to a liberal Zionist consensus on Palestine/Israel can only be imagined. Some idea may be had from this observation on the US by Edward Said:

"In no other country, except Israel, is Zionism enshrined as an unquestioned good, and in no other country is there so strong a conjuncture of powerful institutions and interests - the press, the liberal intelligentsia, the military-industrial complex, the academic community, labor unions - for whom uncritical support of Israel and Zionism enhances their domestic as well as international standing." (The Question of Palestine, 1979, p 58)

Omar could do no better than read Said's seminal work.

Homework is All

And today's use of the anti-Semitism smear is:

"Democratic politician Ilhan Omar has apologised after party leaders condemned her use of 'anti-Semitic tropes' in suggesting US congressional support for Israel is a result of campaign donations." (Democrat apologises for 'anti-Semitic tropes', AP/Sydney Morning Herald, 13/2/19)

To be specific, Omar's 'offence' came in the form of a tweet to the effect that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) "was paying US politicians to support Israel." (ibid)

Her apology read, in part: "Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes." (ibid)

Really, it's beyond sad to see progressive, pro-Palestinian, rookie politicians like Omar, who have merely spoken the truth, grovel in this way.

Instead of the 'education' she speaks of here, wouldn't it have been better for her (and others like her) as a young activist, before choosing to embark on a political career in the United States, to educate herself by reading Mearsheimer & Walt's definitive 2007 study The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy?

Had she done so, rather than grovel after the inevitable attack from the AIPAC mob and/or its dupes, she could simply have tweeted the following extract in response:

"AIPAC's success is due in large part to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda and to punish those who do not, based primarily on its capacity to influence campaign contributions. Money is critical to U.S. elections, which have become increasingly expensive to win, and AIPAC makes sure that its friends get financial support so long as they do not stray from AIPAC's line." (p 154)

In this game, it's really all about homework.

(FYI, read my 3/11/16 post Clinton Emails Reveal the Hold of Zionist Money Over Democrats.)