The battle cry of many an anti-Semite on the left is, “I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Zionist!”
Oh, really?
Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib were recently denied entry into Israel by Prime Minister Netanyahu, at the urging of Donald Trump. The two retaliated in a predictable way. The two lawmakers, prominent represeentatives of the Democratic Party, posted on Instagram a cartoon from an artist who finished second in an Iranian government-sponsored contest on the Holocaust in 2006.
Oof. Looks like both Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib shared this awful Carlos Latuff cartoon in Instagram stories yesterday. In 2006, Latuff came in second in Iran's International Holocaust Cartoon Contest, which is a thing that exists, in case you thought the TL couldn't get any worse. pic.twitter.com/uwyBPAsz7T
— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) August 18, 2019
The artist is a real piece of work.
When talking about his controversial work, the artist has often compared Israel to the Nazi regime. On the subject of using the Holocaust as criticism of Israel he said: “Of course Israel isn’t building gas chambers in the West Bank, but surely we can find some similarities between the treatment given to Palestinians by the [Israel Defense Forces] and the Jews under Nazi rule,” according to Fox News.
“My cartoons have no focus on the Jews or on Judaism. My focus is Israel as a political entity,” he continued, though he did not specify why exactly it was necessary to use such motifs in his works. “It happens to be Israeli Jews that are the oppressors of Palestinians.”
This post comes after the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance changed the definition of “antisemitism”to include “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
Once again, with feeling: “I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m an anti-Zionist.”
It seems to me that, despite denials about being anti-Semites by Squad members, there is an ugly strain of thought in the Democratic Party that makes hating the Jews acceptable. The “I’m an anti-Zionist” claim gives cover to all those anti-Semites who believe Jews run America, or that Israel is as bad as the Nazis. How far a leap of logic from there is it to urge the eradication of Jews? Or the separation of Jews from the rest of society?
Remember, most of those on the far left consider themselves superior moral creatures to the rest of us and would never hate someone because of their religion. So they find other reasons to hate. They don’t hate Christians. They simply want to eliminate their views on abortion and gays from the national conversation, take away their tax-exempt status, and force them to practice their beliefs in secret.
And they would never associate themselves with neo-Nazi yahoos who want to burn down synagogues. They just wish those silly Jews didn’t didn’t have so much money and influence and stopped trying to force America to take Israel’s side.
It’s a variation of the racist claim from the past: “Some of my best friends are negroes,” while working to undermine the civil rights of black American citizens.
The Democrats have an anti-Semite identification problem. If they’re not careful, that will become enshrined in the Party platform and America will have its very first openly anti-Semite political party.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member