Nancy Pelosi tried to offset the
storm of criticism against new Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s succession
of anti-Semitic remarks by claiming “I don’t think Ilhan Omar is
Anti-Semitic. She has a different experience in her use of words, and she
doesn’t understand that some of them are fraught with meaning she doesn’t
realize.” Pelosi showed her ignorance of the cultural and ethnic background
that allowed Somali-born Omar to say what she said, and mean what she said. But
Pelosi did stumble on the kernel of truth behind Omar’s Jew-hating words.
Anti-Semitism is like a virus. It
mutates. It becomes dangerous when it moves out of the dark shadows of the
fringes of society into mainstream politics.
That is what is happening within
the Democratic Party.
So let’s examine the “different
experience” of Omar’s use of words. For that we need to understand her
background.
Somalia lies across the Gulf of
Aden from warring Yemen. Somalia itself has a long history of rebellion, feudal
struggles and civil war. An Islamic country, Sharia law played a significant
part in the nation’s culture. Due to strife and enforced Socialism, the country
deteriorated into desperate poverty and hunger. The Somalia lawlessness let to
international piracy as shipping through the straits of the gulf was incepted
by gun-toting pirates who forced shipping companies to pay ransom for the
return of their crew, cargo, and ships.
The Al-Shabbab terror group arose
in Somalia. International food aid to Somalis was intercepted by its gangs as
people starved.
So it is inappropriate for Ilhan
Omar, who found refuge, progress and privilege in the United States including
an education at North Dakota State University, to claim victimhood or to lash
out at white men and Jews.
Democratic Representative, Jim
Clyburn, who shared a stage with notorious anti-Semite, Louis Farrakhan, said
that Omar “is living through a lot of pain,” referring to the period she
spent in a refugee camp when she was a young girl. She wasn’t in that camp
because of the oppression of Jews, Israel, or even white supremacists. She was
in that camp because of the barbaric cruelty of her fellow Somali Muslims.
There has been nothing in her
personal life experience that implied a victimhood of” evil Israel” or “Jewish
money.”
If Israel has “hypnotized the
world,” another of Omar’s anti-Semitic retorts, it is because a nation of
Jews persecuted in Europe and Muslim lands refused to be stalled in a life of
victimhood and became the only progressive democracy in the Middle East, a
shining example to failed states like Somalia.
Of all the minorities and ethnic
groups in the world, the Jews have more reasons than any other to claim
victimhood, but the Jewish people have proudly rejected that status. To wallow
in victimhood is regressive. To refuse the stigmas of victimhood and determine
your own future is progressive. In this, the Jews excel, and they hate us for
it.
Omar never met one Jew during her
lifetime in Somalia, yet this has not prevented her from spewing out endless
anti-Semitic tropes. She never met an Israeli either, but her anti-Israel
remarks are wrapped up in her anti-Jewish feelings and words.
You don’t have to know Jews
personally to be an anti-Semite. You just have to grow up in a culture that
imbibes Jew hatred from birth. It is enforced in their mosques. It’s a
permanent feature of the Muslim street in the Middle East and parts of Africa.
Just ask the 800,000 Jews who fled Muslim societies and found shelter in
Israel, and in Europe where they have been pursued by the same anti-Semitic
migrants who are practicing their hate in their adopted new European communities
in which they shoot Jews in kosher delis or throw elderly Jewish women
neighbors to their deaths from their high rise apartments in France. It is this
tribal hatred that forges thought and the use of words and violence against
Jews that is incited in a different experience from that of Pelosi and most
Americans.
Some say it’s a reaction to
Israeli policies. Give me a break! It is a hatred of now non-existent Jews, for
Jews were banished from their presence before they knew of an Israel.
The mass migration into Europe come
from undemocratic Muslim regimes in chaos and depression, countries that are
Judenrein – nations without Jews. One would think they would cast off their
prejudices when setting off in search of a new life in Enlightened Europe and
America, but they don’t. They bring their baggage with them and, among that
baggage, is an inbred hatred of the unknown Jew and through that Jew, an inbred
profanity against the Jewish State, Israel.
This is the psychological
background that form the words of Omar’s different experience.
In America, her views are
sharpened by the nurturing embrace of CAIR and people like Linda Sarsour.
Be wary of those who say they
wish to spread a message of diversity. They are the ones who poison the
political atmosphere with an agenda of hate and division.
CAIR, the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, attempts to cover up its radical agenda. It has
been exposed as organizing a stealth jihad introducing sharia into America. It
is inserting its people into local government and high office. It has been
caught supporting the Hamas terrorist organization. It subscribes to the legacy
of the banned Muslim Brotherhood that calls for the destruction of the Jewish
State. Yet CAIR quick to cry victimhood whenever Muslims are caught committing
heinous crimes.
After the San Bernardino
shootings in 2015, in which 14 people were killed and 22 others were injured by
an armed Muslim with a grievance against non-Muslims, CAIR tacked the dog
whistle of Islamophobia on to their condemnation of the incident, thereby
placing the flak-jacket of victimhood ahead of an unlimited apology for the
Islamic attack.
CAIR cannot abide letting the
Jews have their day in Congress. They had to muscle in on the act in order to
deflect the attention away from the hateful words of one of their own.
After the outrage of Omar’s
repeated anti-Jewish remarks, and the demand for Congress to come out with a
clear statement condemning all forms of anti-Semitic, CAIR’s lobbyists
succeeded in cajoling Congress to issue a watered down version that injected
Islamophobia into the issue. The unspoken CAIR message was “don’t you dare
blame Muslims if we choose to express our disdain for Jews. We will accuse you
of being the racists that you are.”
And Congress folded to their
threat.
CAIR and Sarsour hijacked the
motion to condemn anti-Semitism in all its forms and converted it to emphasize
their cause. They claim that America has ignored anti-Muslim sentiment. They
are wrong. Congress has passed endless Islamophobia resolutions ever since 9/11
in 2001 after Muslims hijacked American planes and flew them into buildings,
and again in 2013 and in 2015.
In all that time, and later, Congress
has failed to introduce one resolution specifically on anti-Semitism. This
despite the statistics that, since 2015, hate crimes against American Jews
represent the majority (58.1% in 2017) of all anti-religious hate crimes. In
fact, anti-Jewish incidents outnumber anti-Muslim incidents in America by a
ratio of three to one.
And what of the naïve Jewish
supporters of the Palestinian cause, groups like JStreet and Jewish Voices for
Peace. They thought they were criticizing Israel and supporting the Palestinians
in the name of peace. Now they can see,
at least those who want to see, that they have become the useful idiots to
radical intolerant Jew haters. They thought they were bashing Israel to create
peace through the establishment of a Palestinian state. Instead they were being
exploited by those want to destroy Israel by establishing a Palestine from the
river to the sea. They have been saying this opening. Sadly, JStreet and JVP have
been too blind and too deaf to understand the words of that radically different
experience that ran counter to their own political morality.
What they don’t understand is
this. Be a Jewish American and wave a Palestinian flag and you are welcomed
into their club for supporting a worthy cause. Be a Jewish American and wave an
Israeli flag and you will be accused of dual loyalty or worse.
Ilhan Omar professes she wants to
increase transparency and accessibility in government, but when Linda Sarsour
marched into the Congress building to meet with Ilhan Omar she was surrounded
by CAIR henchmen who physically prevented Muslim Reform Movement founder, Asra
Nomani, from asking pertinent questions of Sarsour and Omar.
I had the honor of sharing a
stage with Asri Nomani at the Springs of Hope Conference in Jerusalem a few
years back. Nomani is a genuine person of peace. Omar, Sarsour, and Tlaib are
divisive haters.
Nancy Pelosi should be very wary
of these people with their different experience in their use of words. They are
bearers of bad tidings.
Pelosi, and America, would be better
advised to listen to the words of Asra Nomani. She is the harbinger of hope and
mutual respect for America. Herself a Muslim immigrant with a different
experience that shape her words and her worldview.
She comes with the message not to
fear Trump, or to hate Israel and Jews, but to fear Islamic extremism.
Barry Shaw,
The View from Israel.
Author of the book ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS, and
Anti-Semitism.’
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TYT5W8S/ref=nav_timeline_asin?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
Well said, Barry.
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