The New Face

In a post a few weeks ago, I noted that after the horrific anti-Semitic murders in Pittsburgh, the media (not to mention the Democrats) redicovered that anti-Semitism had reared its ugly head on the Right. At the same time, they couldn't resist implying that somehow Donald Trump enabled such violent bigotry. I further noted that the Democrats and the media assiduously avoid any mention of anti-Semitism on the Left, leaving the clear implication that it's only a right-wing phenomenon.

As proof, consider the recent election of two new Democrat house members, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan's 13th Congressional District. Both are poster children for the media's new obsession with identity politics because they are women, Muslims, and persons of color. They are being lauded with gushing coverage and flattering photo spreads. They are both representative, say many observers, of the new face of the Democratic Party. Only one small issue—both are virulently anti-Israel and as a consequence, borderline anti-Semitic.

David Harsanyi comments:

The 2018 midterm will bring many new faces to Washington, but few will find as much adoration as Ilhan Omar. One of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, Omar, who will represent Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, is a Somali refugee with a celebrity aura and an uplifting story.

What went curiously unmentioned in all the flattering post-election coverage, however, was that Omar, who replaces Keith Ellison — a former acolyte of anti-Semitic minister Louis Farrakhan — also has some exotic notions about the Jewish people.

In a 2012 tweet, for instance, the Democrat explained that “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza #Palestine #Israel.”

Meanwhile, the other Muslim woman headed to Congress is Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants who wants to cut aid to the Jewish state because supporting it “doesn’t fit the values of our country.” [She is, of course, notably silent on the more than 300 Hamas rockets fired from Gaza that have directly targeted Israeli civilian neighborhoods over the past few days. Those rocket "values" it seems are perfectly okay with her and at least some of the Democrat voters who put her in office.]

Writer David Steinberg identified 105 news stories written in the immediate aftermath of Omar’s victory, and not a single one mentioned that she believed Jewry possessed mind-control abilities or that Israel was “evil.” No one called on the Democratic Party to distance itself from this rhetoric.

No one at the partisan Anti-Defamation League, ostensibly tasked with stopping anti-Jewish libel but in reality busy hyperventilating over every far-flung right-wing bigot with a handful of supporters, paid her any attention.

Now, it isn’t inherently anti-Semitic to be critical of Israeli political leadership or policies. The Democratic Party antagonism toward the Jewish state has been well-established over the past decade. But Omar used a well-worn anti-Semitic trope about the preternatural ability of a nefarious Jewish cabal to deceive the world ...

To accuse the only democratic state in the Middle East, which grants more liberal rights to its Muslim citizens than any Arab nation, of being an “apartheid regime” is, on an intellectual level, grossly disingenuous or incredibly ignorant. And when a politician singles out Jewish allies as “evil,” but ignores every brutal theocratic regime in the area, it’s certainly noteworthy.

Indeed, it is, but not by the Democrat's trained hamsters in the media.

The hamsters do the bidding of their Democrat trainers and demand that every mainstream GOP politician publicly and explicitly disavow every right-wing crazy who expresses anti-Semitic sentiment and further demands that those same GOP politicians explain why the right wing crazy hasn't been somehow encouraged by Donald Trump.

Odd, then, that the hamsters never ask mainstream Democrat politicians (think: Chuck Schumer or Elizabeth Warren, for example) to disavow the statements of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. For that matter, how about asking why the blatant anti-Israel positions of the previous administration haven't somehow been a catalyst for current anti-Semitism on the Left? Nah, that's not a line of inquiry that anyone in the media wants to pursue.