The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) recently published a graphic featuring the delightful visage of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Gaza) with the legend: “For Ilhan Omar, there is no difference between America and the Taliban, between Israel and Hamas, between democracies and terrorists. Tell Rep. Omar: Condemn terrorists, not America.”
The language AIPAC uses in paid ads to smear and vilify @IlhanMN is virtually identical to the language used in death threats she gets.
Make no mistake: AIPAC is putting Rep. Omar's life at risk with repeated Islamophobic attack ads. pic.twitter.com/Ehkn8qmW7p
— Jeremy Slevin (@jeremyslevin) August 11, 2021
This was too much for a firmly woke young fellow named Jeremy Slevin, who has the unenviable job of being the eloquent Omar’s official spokesperson. Slevin fumed on Twitter: “The language AIPAC uses in paid ads to smear and vilify @IlhanMN is virtually identical to the language used in death threats she gets. Make no mistake: AIPAC is putting Rep. Omar’s life at risk with repeated Islamophobic attack ads.” And so here we go again: While steadfastly ignoring actual violence from Antifa and Black Lives Matter, Leftists baselessly equate critical words from their foes with violence. It’s all a prelude to shutting us down altogether.
Related: Ilhan Omar and Other Democrat Representatives Call for Special Envoy to Combat ‘Islamophobia’
In his tweet, Slevin put AIPAC’s graphic next to a June 2021 tweet from Omar herself, in which she claimed that “every time I speak out on human rights I am inundated with death threats. Here is one we just got. ‘Muslims are terrorists. And she is a raghead n*****. And every anti-American communist piece of s*** that works for her, I hope you get what’s f***ing coming to you.”
This crude and ugly threat that Omar allegedly received is so many worlds away from AIPAC’s graphic that Slevin felt the need for an explanatory follow-up: “It shouldn’t have to be stated, but baselessly linking Muslim-Americans to terrorism is *the* textbook example of Islamophobia and is routinely used to silence advocacy for Palestinian human rights.”
Where did AIPAC link Muslim-Americans to terrorism? Nowhere, of course. Its graphic was based on one of Omar’s most infamous tweets: “We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. I asked @SecBlinken where people are supposed to go for justice.”
Yes, that’s right: She equated the United States and Israel, both of which go out of their way to avoid civilian casualties, with jihad terror groups that target civilians and use them as human shields. So AIPAC is entirely correct: She doesn’t make any distinction in that tweet between “America and the Taliban, between Israel and Hamas, between democracies and terrorists.”
To its credit, AIPAC did not back down. An AIPAC spokesperson defended the ad, saying it was “completely fair and accurate. It is not a personal attack and highlights her outrageous statement putting the United States and Israel on the same level as the Taliban and Hamas.”
And when Omar’s Squad partner Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Ramallah) added her own thought-provoking and compelling comment on Slevin’s tweet, “I am so sick of this s**t,” AIPAC responded: “So are we, Congresswoman. Inciting hate by demonizing Israel and spreading vicious, dangerous lies about our democratic ally Israel doesn’t advance the prospects for peace.”
In this kerfuffle, however, AIPAC is trying to reason with people who are not disposed to be rational. Slevin and Omar (and even Tlaib) are presumably capable of rational thought and analysis, but that’s not the game they’re playing here. It doesn’t really matter what AIPAC said, and what it meant. If AIPAC said anything remotely critical of Ilhan Omar, no matter what it was, it was a 100% certainty that Omar’s office would claim that it was being “Islamophobic” and “racist,” and putting her life in danger. And not just AIPAC, of course: This is the fallback for Omar and her team in any situation in which they face any negative feedback at all: The poor black immigrant Muslim congresswoman is being subjected to vicious and life-threatening attacks by racist, redneck yahoos, and needs the support of all decent people.
As a rhetorical tactic, this doubtless fools some on the Left, but it’s not just designed to get the noble congresswoman out of whatever scrape her incendiary anti-Semitic rhetoric has gotten her into at the moment. It’s also part of the Left’s ongoing and escalating efforts to demonize conservatives. Where in bygone days there was discussion and debate between people of opposing views in America, now there is just the excrement-slinging of the unhinged Left, claiming that they’re in danger from those evil white supremacist terrorists everyone talks about but no one can actually find whenever anyone says the mildest critical word. The next step: silence those who are constantly putting people’s lives in danger by daring to criticize them. Ilhan Omar and her Leftist allies shouldn’t have to put up with this. And if they get their way, they won’t have to, not for much longer.
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