NYT: "Jewish Money"
"AIPAC" = pro-Israel non profit, vast majority of members are Jewish
"Benjamins" = slang for money
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Congresswoman Omar ignites new anti-Semitism controversy with comments on AIPAC
- Thread starter SaveWeyard
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NYT: "Jewish Money"
"AIPAC" = pro-Israel non profit, vast majority of members are Jewish
"Benjamins" = slang for money
?
Everyone should be siding with Omar. It's pretty obvious she didn't intentionally lean into anti-Semitic tropes, that she wasn't driven by anti-Semitism, and that she's generally on the right side of history when she calls out the popular consensus on Capital Hill regarding Israel and Palestine.
But while you call out the people smearing her in bad faith, the people unfairly demonizing a black Muslim woman while pretending to care about bigotry, and the people who always seem ridiculously allergic to any criticism of Israel, you can also gently point out Omar could have easily been more careful in her commentary.
And it's not about tone policing. I don't know where this "smh, tone policing while innocents are being killed" narrative came from. As far as I can tell, no one is saying Omar was too uncivil, too aggressive in her language, or whatever else. People in this thread are using the term tone policing in the same way certain other folks use the term political correctness. The issue here is that Omar invoked money in a way that was reductionist, that reductionism centered support for Israel around a single factor in a way that erased all the complexity that actually exists, and all of this so happens to intersect with harmful stereotypes that should actively be avoided.
I don't even know why this has to be explained, and it's a shame that it does because it means people like me end up spending more time discussing Omar's totally understandable mistake and less time telling Republicans and certain Democrats to fuck off.
Again: AIPAC fucking sucks, the Israeli government fucking sucks, and Omar's heart is in the right place. I think "avoid reflexively reducing support for Israel to the idea that people are bought" and no one reasonable can have a problem.
NYT doing this doesn't shock me one bit. They have always been doing this kind of disgusting shit.
Yes they are.
And Jewish Americans make up les than 3% of the US population. So that might not be a good metric for determining if there's a problem!
It's hilarious to me that people (the media) are literally changing the words she used. She never ever used the term, "Jewish Money". She very specifically used the term, "AIPAC". She very clearly used it in the context of explaining that lobbyists are buying our politicians for influence. She said that's why so many politicians are beholden to AIPAC. There's nothing wrong with what she said, and in facts it's really fucking true.
I get the offensive anti-semetic trope and its history of blaming Jewish billionaires for their influence and money affecting society. But that is NOT what she said. Does this trop mean AIPAC can't be criticized as a lobbying group because they happen to lobby solely for Israel's interests and it happens to be a Jewish country? This is the same bullshit tactic of conflating anything that's anti-Israel as Anti-Semetic. I just don't see it at all here.
I get the offensive anti-semetic trope and its history of blaming Jewish billionaires for their influence and money affecting society. But that is NOT what she said. Does this trop mean AIPAC can't be criticized as a lobbying group because they happen to lobby solely for Israel's interests and it happens to be a Jewish country? This is the same bullshit tactic of conflating anything that's anti-Israel as Anti-Semetic. I just don't see it at all here.
So you think she was referring to Jews when she made the benjamins tweet
She tweeted "AIPAC!" hours after the original tweet. How are people unable to construct a chronological timeline in their heads?
Meanwhile:
PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY CAUGHT ON TAPE BOASTING THAT ITS MONEY INFLUENCES WASHINGTON
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/11/ilhan-omar-israel-lobby-documentary/
And the sky is blue and water is wet.
PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY CAUGHT ON TAPE BOASTING THAT ITS MONEY INFLUENCES WASHINGTON
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/11/ilhan-omar-israel-lobby-documentary/
And the sky is blue and water is wet.
Schumer's record is very, very clear, and for you to to even ask this suggests you don't know it. You might as well have asked "You know, Trump clearly seems like a giant bigot, but have you ever considered that Trump's bigotry is purely for show and he's actually very anti-bigotry but just has never lifted a finger to show himself as such?"
Even if it was true that Schumer only pretends to be vehemently in favor of the horrific actions of the Israeli government in order to gain s money/support from supporting it while keeping his personal opinions so close to the vest that no human has ever seen them, it doesn't matter. It's still 100% appropriate to treat him as though the positions he espouses in public are genuine and not some secret 13-dimensional chess move.
To quote the great Kurt Vonnegut: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."
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Last person hounded by the media was another Muslim woman for
Saying trump
Was a Mofo .
Notice a pattern ?
In any situation where there is a movement against an oppressor, there will be some people from the side of privilege who are going to be offended by those who are fighting back against their oppression. When Colin Kaepernick was kneeling during the national anthem, there are some folks who are sympathetic to the BLM movement who are also strongly patriotic and they are going to have their feelings hurt. Is it the role of Kaepernick to apologize to them for offending their sensibilities? Or is it their job to understand the context to which he is trying to speak out and represent an oppressed people?
This is a bit rich, considering these politicians' views on and strong support for Israel are well established yet you're apparently unaware of them.
Schumer's 2019 AIPAC Speech
Haaretz profile of Pelosi (subheading: Pelosi keeps the dog tags of Israeli soldiers as a 'symbol of the sacrifices made, sacrifices far too great by the people of the state of Israel')
These seem like earnestly held personal convictions to me.
Lmao what. People fell into upside down. Now we can't criticize Israel.
im thinking having a spine and a loud voice when you speak unequivocal truths as a woman of color paints a target on your back
You know why. The media isn't going to be coy about their stance here.
And yes, they will conflate the story in hopes of escalating things further.
Yeah, she tweeted about the influence of lobbyists on politicians and when asked for clarification she explained the obvious that she was referring to AIPAC. At no point did she ever even reference Jewish Money. I don't understand how people are able to construct such a bogus allegation of anti-semetism and actually have it stick. They're literally accusing her or using words she never used.
BLM is a good example because just like the money comment people pretended Black Lives Matter was offensive and even our own Nancy Peloci said that all lives matter
You probably know the difference between "supporting Maduro" and "opposing the US acting like they are world police on a country that doesnt concern them"
Probably.
Im going to put in the effort, lets talk about Pelosi. These are some of the pro-Israel actions done by Nancy.
1. Voting in favor of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 that urged from congress to move the american embassery to Jerusalem, a (nowadays) widely unpopular thing.
2. Sponsoring a resolution that blamed Palestine for the 2008-2009 Gaza War and reafirmed support for Israel.
3. Saying "There is no greater political accomplishment in the 20th Century than the establishment of the State of Israel" while visiting it with other democrats.
Like or dislike her, she"s waay too close to Israel for me to feel comfortable.
(To also be fair to her, she has had more neutral stances not too long ago, but still)
Words matter. Say "influenced by" or something. Or "pro-Israel lobby" instead of specifying AIPAC.
But to say that most politicians aside from a few like Omar and AOC are taking "donations from" AIPAC is contradicted by this sentence from the article in the OP:
And the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee is a non-profit that doesn't donate directly to candidates.
words clearly don't matter since that's all fucking word salad
the sentence you quoted is contradicted by the very next sentence :
AIPAC, however, does relentlessly push a pro-Israeli message on Capitol Hill and inside the executive branch, and its members donate to pro-Israel lawmakers and candidates while seeking to defeat those it considers a threat to U.S.-Israeli relations.
so it's a committee... consisting of members... who individually donate to candidates... but the "committee doesn't donate directly to candidates"
Strongly disagree.
Democrats are acting as if she pulled an Eric Trump and said "It's all about the Shekels baby". What she stated was a well known fact that the pro Israel lobby makes donations to politicians and its in those politicians self interest to toe the line against anything negative said about Israel. Which is why so many jimmies got rustled because its bipartisan:
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Someone already told you that it is certain that AIPAC directs its members to donate to certain politicians. Also, that says "directly" to candidates, meaning that they do it indirectly. Additionally, there was a twitter thread posted earlier that talked about how the director of the Cincinnati AIPAC donated 5000 to a Dem politician.
It sure sees like there are some people who oppose US action in Venezuela, and others who support Maduro (as well as opposing US action)... certainly there is plenty of "whataboutism" concerning Maduro's regime.
This shit. This goddamn shit. This bullshit right here is what gets me. This is the true purpose behind the fake moral outrage. Shielding Israel from any and all repercussions as a genocidal apartheid and highly racist ethnostate. And of course shielding the disgusting peddlers of hatred and annihilation that exist in our government on all sides.
In this case, and to play devil's advocate for a second, I think saying "pro-Israel lobby" is worse than saying "AIPAC".
AIPAC is a proper noun, a literal group of people whose memberships and activities are publicly traceable.
"Pro-Israel lobby" is a vague gesture towards Israel-supporting elements in the US.
You see where I'm going with this?
If I was going to deliver bad faith attacks against critics of Israel, saying "pro-Israel" gives me a lot more room for intentional message muddling than "AIPAC".
Also yeah the other thing about AIPAC members being political donors.
Every interest group uses money to influence Washington.
The difference is in the framing. Even with the NRA, people generally recognize it derives a lot of its power from preexisting pro-gun sentiment, deeply embedded tradition, single issue voters, and so on. Centering support for Israel, something that manifests in a lot of different ways and comes from a lot of places, around AIPAC is grossly simplistic in a way that inevitably evokes damaging tropes.
And remember, we're typically pretty good at weighing history in our evaluations. This is simply a more sensitive subject than, say, the NRA. I don't think it hurts to be a little more careful with your approach.
This should be the case, unfortunately many that oppose Trump, also oppose Guaido, and cant differentiate the two. You would think that you could support Guaido AND oppose military intervention from the United States.
"Maduro Support" with a capital 'S' is basically nil on this board
what there is, is people saying that the degree to which Maduro's election was suspect/rigged does not give the United States the tiniest shred of justification to perform it's ritualistic act of regime change that greases the wheels of it's global empire. nor does Guaido have more than the flimsiest "constitutionality" to base his claim to the presidency on.
particularly when multiple previous instances of the same phenomenon coordinated by the SAME GUY ACTING AS ENVOY TO VENEZUELA IN 2019, Elliott Abrams, resulted in CIA trained soldiers committing genocide and the most wholesale acts of barbarism in modern history outside of ISIS.
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/30/elliott-abrams-venezuela-coup/
Touched on this earlier, but Colin Kaepernick and BLM are extremely bad examples here.
From the second Kaep kneeled, it was with intention, clarity and purpose. He gave interviews and talks, he explained what he was doing and why he was doing it. He didn't trip into this.
BLM almost from the very beginning has had a damn website the explicitly states what they're about and what they're trying to achieve. Again, intention, clarity and purpose.
In both cases, you don't see wide-spread and persistent confusion on the two. Occasionally, you'll see someone slip into an "All Lives Matter" moment. But that almost always results in them being dog-piled by the Left. And I'm not mentioning the right's reaction to Kaep or BLM because I don't give a damn what they do, think or say. I refuse to equate Omar having a case of Twitter-fingers with the sheer thinking that went into BLM and even Kaep. In fact, that's borderline offensive to me.
I do think Omar owes it to herself to think about her approach to these issues if so much of the criticism is coming from her side. It's not because the Left as a whole wants to shield Israel from criticism. We learned from Bernie's criticism of AIPAC in 2016 that there's actually an appetite for it!
Who could have imagined that the political views of "Group A that supports X" and "people who are members of Group A that supports X" would be in line on the issue of "X"... totally shocking. Next you'll tell us that members of the Sierra Club donate to candidates that are pro-environment, what a scandal that would be...
As far as some AIPAC person from some random city, was that a personal donation? Do you think that just because someone works for a non-profit, they shouldn't be allowed to donate money to politicians the same as any other US citizen can?
Now we're entering David Sirota (who on the subject of Maduro, wrote "Hugo Chavez's economic miracle") on Beto taking oil/gas money territory...
https://twitter.com/aholdenj/status/1069819674450247680
I don't condone Democrats linking arms with the entire right wing to attack a black woman for daring to speak truth to power but what was Pelosi (Yas Queen!) supposed to do? Did you see what Omar tweeted? Not to mention that tweet that she retweeted and deleted later. If she didn't want both sides to unite in attacking her then maybe she should have thought twice about relying on somehing as threatening and ambiguous as facts.
Basically what I'm saying is that she's no angel, am I right?
Reading this and seeing your avatar gave me an aneurysm, thanks.
(I get what you mean and get that you get what I mean.)
to be fair, that phrase is from her 2012 "hypnotized the world" tweet, which actually was legitimately evocative (however unintentionally) of anti-Semitic tropes about a secret all-powerful Jewish cabal, and she was right to apologize for her words there
didn't apologize for the underlying point, though, which is good
because i don't post on reddit and I want to at least attempt to limit the scope of my claim to something reasonable? i'm not going to have my opinions conflated with those of sock puppet accounts on twitter or whatever
And I would say that the bolded above is a gross underestimation of the influence AIPAC sways over the US Government. They're not called the strongest lobby force in the US for nothing. Their power are as such that stuff like anti-BDS bill that favors defending Israel over the US citizens' first amendment rights (with fucking Democratic politicians also co-sponsoring them), something that is by all obvious standards are just simply and unequivocally wrong, are created and have passed the Senate.
If leaders of the 'left' such as Hillary, Harris, and Pelocy all have voiced their unequivocal support towards Israel, that what is it if not "left as a whole wants to shield Israel from criticism"? If even something as using the word "occupation" to describe Israel's treatment of West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Height is not something that the Left politicians would even dare to use...
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/08/democrats-end-right-ariel-sharon-israeli-occupation-palestine/
Then what is it if not "left as a whole wants to shield Israel from criticism"?
Heck even Bernie himself is demurring on the BDS movement.
If there is an 'appetite for it' as you say, then the left politicians have certainly shown such a remarkable effort of not showing it to be true.
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Okay and that's fine. But if you follow the "Maduro thread" back to its origin, you'll see that the discussion was not about support for Maduro on this board, but in general.
How does that sentence you clipped out answer anything from the comment of mine that you quoted... I mean it even says "members" right in it...
Good thing Omar bent the knee to Pelosi and apologized. That sure put an end to this story and by no means are Likud slappies doubling down on their performative outrage!
well for all it was thrown at me in that thread that I need to "talk to actual venezuelans" to hear why they hate maduro, I don't think any of the same people bothered to try and find a real venezuelan maduro supporter to ask why they don't support regime change even when they can't put food on the table
though, this is a digression from the topic about Ilhan Omar
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