Ilhan Omar, Israel, and Apartheid
By Nayyer Ali, MD
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, just elected from Minnesota in November, has gotten into hot water for a series of comments or tweets she put out about Israel and its supporters in the US. She is of Somali origin, is one of two Muslim women in Congress, and is known for wearing a headscarf. She did not run, and was not elected on a platform of support for the Palestinians, but she shares a sympathy for them that is common among Muslims regardless of their ethnic background.
The problem arose because some of her comments suggested that Israel’s support in the US government is a result of too much money, specifically that AIPAC, the main pro-Israel lobbying group in the US, is paying US politicians to support Israel. Going back to 2012, before she was in politics, she criticized Israel’s violence in Gaza in a tweet that read: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza #Palestine #Israel”. Most recently, she suggested that Americans who support Israel have a loyalty to a foreign country.
Being among the first Muslims elected to Congress (and earlier this decade we had two African-American converts elected, Andre Carson and Keith Ellison), Omar has a deep responsibility to be thoughtful and judicious in all of her remarks. There remains a deep well of Islamophobia among Republicans in particular ready to attack our entire community, and to convince the broader American public that Muslims should not be allowed to participate in government. For Muslim elected officials, the need to think carefully applies doubly so when speaking about Israel.
I will give Omar the benefit of the doubt and state that she is not actually anti-Semitic, and perhaps she does not have the cultural fluency to understand the full significance of some of the charges she makes. However, she does traffic in certain anti-Semitic concepts which damages not just her politically, but also the Palestinian cause which I assume is what she is hoping to promote. The notion that Jews control finance, have inordinate amounts of money, and use that money to buy influence, is a very old anti-Semitic stereotype that was widespread in Europe a century ago. While it is true that that Jews on average in the US are more prosperous than the average American, that is easily explained by their higher levels of education and entrepreneurship, and not by some nefarious scheme to run the world. Other minority groups, including Indians, Chinese, and Muslims for that matter, are doing well with high levels of education and economic success. If Jews work together to promote a policy they want from the government by organizing, fundraising, and voting, that is how our system works, and lots of other groups do the same exact thing. AIPAC is particularly good at it. The way to counter them is to develop and organize in the other direction, not to complain that they are an evil element in our society.
The idea that Jews “hypnotize” others is also an old anti-Semitic charge from Europe. Perhaps, Omar did not realize that, but trafficking in stereotype will only damage your own credibility, and she did end up apologizing for that. Same with the idea that Jews have a “dual loyalty”, and are not truly American. It is actually very common for certain ethnic groups to lobby and support their country of heritage. There has long been a Greek lobby in the US, and there is an Indian lobby, and even an Armenian lobby. None of these lobbies think of themselves as having divided loyalty, but rather argue that they want improve American foreign policy in a way that serves America’s interests.
Why Israel carries so much support among the US political class is a complex question, and in my view, AIPAC is not the dominant factor. Israel has had its ups and downs with the US, with a relatively Eisenhower in the 1950’s but a more support Kennedy and Johnson in the 1960’s. Jimmy Carter was not seen as a friend of Israel, and George H.W. Bush famously held up loans because Israel’s government was dragging its feet on peace proposals. Obama pushed Israel hard on a two-state solution, while Trump has been the most pro-Israel President ever.
Trump actually illustrates a changing dynamic in the American landscape. It used to be that Israel was equally supported by Democrats and Republicans, but as the Israeli governments have drifted further to the right and more intransigent, there has developed a split. Republicans remain very supportive of an Israel that makes no concessions to Palestinian rights, while the Democrats have clearly shifted to strong support for creating a Palestinian state. In the 2016 election, the most pro-Palestinian Presidential candidate in either party was Bernie Sanders, who happens to be Jewish. Sanders illustrates an excellent point, there are many Jewish critics of the Israeli government, and Ilhan Omar’s use of anti-Semitic notions does the Palestinians no favor by burning bridges with these potential allies. On the flip side, the Republicans have become extremely supportive of right-wing Israeli policies, but this is not driven by AIPAC or American Jews. Most American Jews vote for and contribute to Democrats. The real driving force in the GOP is what is known as “Christian Zionism”, a belief common among evangelical Christians that the return of Jesus Christ and the end of the world requires the creation of Israel.
So how should Muslim politicians speak about the US-Israeli relationship? It’s actually very simple. There is no need to talk about Jews as a group (there are many opinions and views among Jews, so one cannot generalize in any case), nor is there any need to complain about the power of organized Jewish groups that lobby on Israel’s behalf. They are playing within the system we have, so change the system if that is your complaint. What they should talk about is the apartheid that goes on in Palestine. Israel has sovereignty over 6 million Palestinians, about 1.2 million are in Israel and have Israeli citizenship (but are still second-class citizens), the rest are in Gaza and the West Bank and have no citizenship. They live under a state of apartheid that is unique on the planet. Oppressed minorities that seek independence are present in many countries, but they are still citizens of those countries. As long as they don’t engage in politics they can live a normal life. They can travel, go to university, start a business, be secure in their property, have recourse to a legal system, participate in government, join the army, etc. This is true for the Kurds in Turkey, the Tibetans in China, the Chechens in Russia, the Kashmiris in India and other groups. The Palestinians have no such rights, they do not even have citizenship in the state that is sovereign over them, which is a fundamental violation of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What Muslim-Americans, and all other Americans who support the principles of human equality and human rights should do is state directly and repeatedly this is absolutely unacceptable. Israel must choose to either give the Palestinians it rules over full citizenship, or it must withdraw completely from the West Bank and Gaza and give them freedom in their own state. But annexation of the West Bank by creeping settler colonization combined with perpetual subjugation and apartheid is absolutely an abomination that no American government should support. The proper approach is to state that further US military, economic, and diplomatic support for Israel is at risk if Israel does not end this hideous apartheid they have imposed on the Palestinians for over 50 years.
