Just Deserts for Ilhan Omar
I declare herewith once more and most emphatically that the guilt of the German people in this war — into which they were forced by you — consists solely in trying to end the eternal difficulties to their national existence, which you artfully instigated and continued.
Hermann Göring wrote these words to Winston Churchill just a few days before his death sentence for crimes against humanity was to be executed. The court at Nuremberg had seen the cold, hard evidence of his crimes as Hitler’s No. 2 man. A salient example was his orchestration of Kristallnacht, the gigantic, nationwide pogrom that resulted in the burning and smashing of synagogues and Jewish homes and businesses, the murder, beating, and humiliation of thousands, followed, for many survivors, by summary consignment to concentration camps. As his pièce de résistance, Göring imposed a one-billion-mark fine on the German Jewish community to pay for the cleanup of the wreckage his minions had wrought.
Now, all he had left was his astounding combination of self-pity, arrogance, and self-righteousness. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson led Göring’s prosecution, which was thorough, patient, and overwhelming. Göring, typically, saw in the court only a reflection of his own philosophy — the winners kill the losers. Or, as Göring scribbled on the margins of his indictment: “The victor will always be the judge and the vanquished the accused.”
Blessedly, Ilhan Omar has never held in her hands the concentrated power Göring so enjoyed. But her attitude last week, called to account by the new Republican leadership for her own rampant hatred, called Göring to mind.
Mind you, she has had to be much more careful in how she expresses her hatred than Göring. Fat Hermann could say what he wanted about the Jews as directly as he chose to. He was part of a ruling party that, alone, could say out loud most of what it really thought. Neither he nor his party were in the least squeamish about expressing their contempt and hatred of the Jews.
On the other hand, as British columnist Melanie Phillips put it in her recent JNS article, “The demonization of Israel is the defining cause of the progressive left. As such, it has become the default narrative in all higher reaches of the culture.”
This normalization of demonization of Israel allows Omar’s hatred to masquerade as high moral purpose among all those who have bought the anti-Israel line that has become increasingly powerful in Omar’s party. It is certainly the only thought allowed to those in the Squad or in their amen-corner.
That amen-corner includes the MSM, which gave Omar generous dollops of free time on network news to claim that she is suffering persecution solely for being a Muslim woman of color who has dared to speak freely.
What, Omar bigoted? The woman who tweeted that U.S. support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins” — she of all people is bigoted?!! The woman who said in 2012 that “Israel has hypnotized the world” — bigoted?!!
Ah yes, she told everyone for a modest second, she apologizes. On CNN, where she had a lot of free time, she said, “I might have [might have, mind you, might have] used words at the time that I didn’t understand were trafficking in antisemitism.”
Quite an apology. What more could anyone want? Kevin, you are at fault, persecuting this poor person who didn’t know what [substitute correct pronoun] was doing.
Phillips did not turn sarcastic, but instead did something better.
She asked: What was Omar saying? And this is what it amounts to: There is a prejudice called anti-Semitism, which is not good, but I didn’t understand that saying that Jews were hypnotizing the world was prejudiced.
That either displays an astonishing ignorance or, and this seems more likely, it indicates she believes that what she said is not prejudice but simply factual. Truth-to-power Omar is cleverly still sticking it to the Man, even as she offers an incredible (in the literal sense) apology.
Hatred emboldens people. Omar seems to think that those whom she continues to hold in contempt would not see through either her claim of ignorance or the coded assertion of the truth that motivates her every action in the sole center of her foreign policy interests — the taking down of the Jewish state.
Since that is the goal, and much more meaningful than just a Jew-baiting insult or two; and since one ought to grant Omar the intelligence she displays (even if that may not be as great as the intelligence she may think she has); then one can see this as simply providing cover for the Obama/Biden slow-walk of their tyrant-centered policy in the Middle East.
Iran has done itself no favors, and the stench of its repression is so overwhelming now that Antony Blinken has to stop the slow walk to letting Iran have the Bomb. Even the great Obama would agree that pushing the Iran deal now is impolitic.
That leaves the other tyranny so beloved of what Truman called the striped-pants boys in State: President-for-Life Abbas, Kleptocrat In Chief of the PA. Funds have been channeled back to him and his pay-for-slay government, rumblings made about moving the embassy back from Jerusalem; on the other hand, the Democratic Party machinery has cranked up its well-honed catastrophizing rhetoric to see if they can do to Netanyahu what they have been able to do to Trump, and paint him as an utterly toxic troglodyte unwelcome in polite company.
Nasty as all that is, the bottom line is — Kevin McCarthy did the right thing. Omar’s hatred should be treated for what it is. In this vote to remove Omar from the Foreign Affairs committee, he was shamefully opposed by a party that, in the not-too-distant past, was as committed to fighting hatred of Jews as any civilized person ought to be. The Speaker, backed by the necessary majority, held true and did what was right.
Good for them.
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