Reply to The Rush to Judge Ilhan Omar

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[quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous][All I'm saying is that a WHOLE LOT of Jewish people, for whom having a major disruption in their party is undesirable, are choosing (I suppose) to find her words offensive and anti-Semitic. Is it just more outrage culture? If Democrats are so whipped up by the outrage culture they have created that they can't even step back and interpret benign words the way they were intended, even when it's in their best interest to do so, then that's going to be the death of them. OTOH, if that's not what it is, perhaps you could just say that people feel the way they feel, and that her words aroused some sort of feelings in them that were negative and familiar. And if so, then there's a very good chance that the phrasing or something about her words makes them less innocent than you feel they are. If there are two distinct viewpoints on this within the Democratic party, it is clearly up for interpretation and far from factual.

When a group of Jewish leaders in MN met with her last year to tell her they were upset by things she had said, and the "Jews have hypnotized the world" comment was one among other things she had said, can we accept that their feelings and reasons were legitimate? We do not know what their other examples were. [/quote]

Interesting that you misquote her 2012 tweet. In that tweet, she said that Israel had hypnotized the world, not the Jews. She later said that she didn't understand how that would be understood and apologized. But what we are discussing now, and what she was just criticized for on the floor of the US House of Representatives was her talk at Busboys and Poets. I can offer a couple of different possible explanations for the criticism. I don't know which, if any, are correct:

1) The first reports of her talk wildly mischaracterized her words. That established a narrative that has been difficult to push back. I also think that once many had reacted to the initial reports, they for whatever reason were reluctant to admit they were wrong.

2) It may be that the attacks on her have less to do with anti-Semitism and more to do with squashing any criticism of Israel and its supporters.

3) Omar's use of the word "allegiance" was unfortunate and contributed to the mischaracterization of her remarks. Had she said "support" instead, things might be different. It's possible that that single word is enough for some of her critics to basically declare "end of story" and not really concern themselves with her fuller statement.

4) Some may feel that while her words are not explicitly anti-Semitic, her intent (which assume to divine) was anti-Semitic.

5) I think that the attention paid to her 2012 tweet (for which she apologized) and her comment about the Benjamins, plus her religion, created a preconceived notion that she is anti-Semitic. This made it easy for people to assume the worst about her Busboys and Poets remarks and allowed easy acceptance of the initial mischaracterizations.

6) Lastly, the media played a significant role in broadcasting the mischaracterization of her remarks. Even now the Washington Post has an article that falsely describes what she said. I have written to the journalist and hopefully he will correct it.
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