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angela davis
Ilhan Omar Won't Be Cowed by Trump
Whether Trump likes it or not, “our country” is also Omar’s country
May 02, 2019
Last Saturday, the final day of the Jewish holiday of Passover, 19-year-old white supremacist John T. Earnest allegedly walked into the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California, raised his AR-style assault rifle and began shooting. He reportedly killed congregant Lori Gilbert Kaye as she stood in front of her rabbi, Yisroel Goldstein, protecting him. Eyewitnesses said Earnest shot Goldstein twice, blowing off part of his finger, and injured two others, then fled. He was arrested a short time later. A manifesto surfaced, which he allegedly wrote and posted online, riddled with anti-Semitic language. In it, he also took credit for an attempted arson of a mosque in nearby Escondido a month earlier. A message left on the mosque parking lot referenced the massacre at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 50 Muslim worshippers were gunned down. In his own manifesto, the New Zealand shooter described President Donald Trump as "a symbol of renewed white identity."
On Saturday, Minnesota Democratic Congressmember Ilhan Omar tweeted: "My heart is breaking after today's deadly shooting at Chabad Congregation in San Diego -- on the last day of Passover and 6 months to the day after the Tree of Life shooting. We as a nation must confront the terrifying rise of religious hate and violence." She ended with "Love trumps hate."
Since taking office in January, Omar, one of the first two Muslim women ever elected to Congress and the first in Congress to wear a hijab, has been frequently targeted by Trump. Most recently, he tweeted a video alternating between images of Omar and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She has been targeted for her unabashed criticism of U.S. support of Israel's occupation of Palestine. Death threats against her have spiked, and she's been vilified by the right-wing media. Angered by the threats and vitriol, a group of prominent African American women rallied in front of the U.S. Capitol Tuesday, at a rally they called "Black Women in Defense of Ilhan Omar."
"When [Trump] chooses to attack me, we know that that attack isn't for Ilhan. [It's] the continuation of the attacks that he's leveled against women, against people of color, against immigrants, against refugees, and certainly against Muslims."
"It is about time that we stepped up to defend those who represent our political vision on the front lines of struggle," legendary activist, author and scholar Angela Davis said at the podium. "The attack against Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, while it is clearly directed at her as an individual, is also designed to dissuade all of us from speaking out on issues that are considered controversial ... the numerous threats of assassination from white nationalists and their supporters are a way of sending messages to other black women, to all who hold radical and progressive political views, that they, too, can be made into targets of vitriolic, violent racism: 'Be quiet, or you will suffer the fate of Ilhan Omar.'"
Joining Angela Davis was historian Barbara Ransby, an adviser to the Movement for Black Lives. Princeton professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor spoke, as did Alicia Garza, co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter. "From R. Kelly to Donald Trump, what we can no longer accept is the silencing of black women!," said Ayanna Pressley, the first African American congresswoman ever elected from Massachusetts. Rashida Tlaib, the only other Muslim congresswoman, also spoke.
The crowd rose in a resounding ovation as Congressmember Ilhan Omar arrived. Her 17-minute speech was a damning indictment of Trump, saying he "and his allies are doing everything that they can to distance themselves and misinform the public from the monsters that they created, who are terrorizing the Jewish community and the Muslim community," she said. "Because when we are talking about anti-Semitism, we must also talk about Islamophobia. It's two sides of the same coin of bigotry."
Trump said of Omar in a recent TV interview, "She is somebody that doesn't really understand life, real life ... she's got a way about her that's very, very bad for our country."
Whether Trump likes it or not, "our country" is also Omar's country. At the rally, she said: "I don't only represent one marginalized voice, because in this country being black is enough of being marginalized. But I also happen to be a woman. That's a second marginalization. I happen to be a Muslim. And I also happen to be a refugee and an immigrant ... So, when [Trump] chooses to attack me, we know that that attack isn't for Ilhan. [It's] the continuation of the attacks that he's leveled against women, against people of color, against immigrants, against refugees, and certainly against Muslims. We are collectively saying, 'Your vile attacks, your demented views are not welcome here.'"
Ilhan Omar fled to the United States as a refugee from war in Somalia. "If I survived the militias," she said, standing against the backdrop of the Capitol dome behind her, "I certainly can survive these people."
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Criticizing Israel Isn't Anti-Semitic. Here's What Is.
Pro-Israel politicians don't speak for young Jews like me. They shouldn't pretend to.
Mar 05, 2019
Weeks ago, when the first accusations of anti-semitism were being leveled against Representative Ilhan Omar, I was deeply agitated.
Not long ago I saw her address these accusations at a local town hall. She reminded the world that, as a Black Muslim woman in America, she knows what hate looks like -- and spends her life laboring against it. Her words were clear, bold, and unflinching.
When members of Congress not only continued to gang up and falsely smear Omar as anti-semitic, but even created a House Resolution painting her words as hateful, I wasn't just agitated. I was absolutely disgusted.
Omar has criticized the U.S. government's support for Israeli actions that break international law. And she's spoken out against the role money in politics plays in shoring up that support.
Neither is anti-semitic.
What is anti-semitic is the cacophony of mainstream media and politicians saying that criticizing U.S. policy toward the state of Israel is the same as attacking Jewish people.
Like most American Jewish youth, I grew up knowing Israel. During holidays, I sang prayers about Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel. In Hebrew school, I learned about the country's culture, its cities, its past prime ministers. At my Jewish summer camp, we started every day with the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah.
My image of Israel was a rosy one. When I finally visited it in college, I was spellbound by the lush landscapes and sparkling cities, certain I would one day move to this golden ancestral home myself.
All this emotional buildup made it all the more sickening when, in the years that followed, I learned the realities of the Israeli occupation.
The modern state of Israel was established by Zionists -- a nationalist movement started by European Jews with the aim of creating a "Jewish state" as a refuge for persecuted Jews.
It's true that Jews have faced centuries of brutal persecution in Europe. But the Zionists' project shared unmistakably European colonialist roots.
In 1948, Israel's war of independence led to the Nakba, an invasion driving 700,000 Palestinians from their homes. These Palestinians were never allowed to return, creating a massive refugee population that today numbers over 7 million.
While I was able to travel freely up and down Israel, the Palestinians who once lived there are legally barred from returning. While I wandered the marketplaces trying stews and shawarmas, Palestinians in Gaza can't afford even the gas to cook their food because of the Israeli blockade.
Zionism didn't create an inclusive Jewish refuge either. In fact, the diverse Mizrahi -- or Arab -- Jewish population that was already thriving in Palestine was pushed out of Israeli society as Ashkenazi -- or European -- Jews became the elite class.
What it did create is an imperialist stronghold that continues to break international law by building settlements deeper and deeper into Palestinian territory, giving Jewish Israelis superior legal status to Arab Israelis and Palestinians, and attacking all who protest.
Since Israel's origin, the U.S. has supplied tens of billions of dollars of military aid and ardent political support. Congress consistently ignores dozens of UN resolutions condemning Israeli abuses, and year after year gives it more resources to violently oppress impoverished Palestinians.
Pro-Israel lobbying groups' considerable political influence has even pushed Congress to consider bills punishing Americans who support Palestinian rights. (Around half of all states already have such laws.)
More broadly, they rely on villainizing critics with false claims of antisemitism -- especially when the criticism comes from a person of color, as we've seen with Angela Davis, Marc Lamont Hill, and Michelle Alexander before Rep. Omar.
I, along with an increasing number of young American Jews, want to discuss U.S. support of Israel. Talking foreign policy is not anti-semitism.
What is anti-semitic -- always -- is saying that all Jews support violence and imperialism.
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I'm Jewish, and I Find the Hypocrisy of Republican Islamophobes Hounding Ilhan Omar Breathtaking
It is no surprise that the first elected officials defending Palestinian human rights are facing such fierce opposition from defenders of the status quo
Mar 05, 2019
Representative Ilhan Omar is facing censure in the House, brought in part by her own party leaders. She is also facing shockingly Islamophobic attacks calling her a terrorist, simply because she is a Muslim. And all the while, other congressional leaders are tweeting out unabashedly anti-Semitic messages with abandon.
The hypocrisy is breathtaking enough at its own right, but it is also an indicator of the fight between an emerging progressive coalition that seems different than Congressional generations of old, and which increasingly integrates Palestinian rights into its agenda, based on universal rights and the need for equality and freedom for all people.
Representative Ilhan Omar is also part of a class of newly elected Congresspeople who don't look much like Congresspeople of generations past: dynamic women of color from communities (Black and Muslim in Ilhan Omar's case,) who face some of the fiercest racism and xenophobia in this country.
Not coincidentally, it is young people, women, and people of color who make up the emerging coalition of progressive people that support Palestinian rights as a natural part of an agenda based on fairness, dignity and freedom. This is the context around the accusations of anti-Semitism and islamophobia in the last weeks centering on Representative Omar. While some critics of Representative Omar's tweets made them in good faith, too often they were part of a cynical strategy to paint this emerging progressive coalition as anti-Semitic.
As one of two of the first Muslim-American women in Congress, Ilhan Omar is facing a specific set of demands and attacks. Accusations of anti-Semitism are being used to silence her criticisms of Israel. An obvious form of Islamophobia coming from the right is attacking her directly for her identity. A soft form of Islamophobia is evident in the lesser degree of concern expressed for the far more outrageous attacks on her personally. And many more liberal elected officials and others are making a false claim of equivalence between calling out of Omar's tweets (which were about Israel) and calling out Islamophobia against Omar herself.
Rep. Omar has engaged with critics who brought up good faith critiques of her language and has shown true commitment to live up to her values--unlike other members of Congress who continue to promote anti-Semitic messages
Even before the West Virginia GOP posted a heinous Islamophobic poster linking Representative Ilhan Omar to the attacks of 9/11 because she is Muslim, the Islamophobia at play in the attacks on Omar was blatantly clear. As Omar tweeted: "My Americanness is questioned by the President and the @GOP on a daily basis, yet my colleagues remain silent." At the same time, Congressional leaders are making actual anti-Semitic statements--like the tweet posted over the weekend by Rep. Jim Jordan, spelling Tom Steyer's name with a dollar sign instead of an S, or then-Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's tweet about Jewish donors which are going all but unnoticed, and certainly unpunished.
anti-Semitism--specifically as an expression of right-wing white supremacy--has never been in such proximity to power, at least in my lifetime, and Jewish people from across the political spectrum are rightfully frightened. Charlottesville, what feels like a cascade of graffiti and physical attacks on Jewish people--and above all else, the murderous attack in Pittsburgh--are making many of us revise our belief of our safety in this country, especially those of us who are white and who have not been singled out as directly for abuse, in recent lived experience.
That makes it confusing when critiques of Israel, support of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), or even anti-Zionism are presented as part of the continuum of anti-Semitism that Jews in the U.S. are facing in this era.
It has never been more important to be able to distinguish between the critique--even the harshest critique--of a state's policies (Israel,) and discrimination against a people (Jews.) Israel does not represent all Jews. Not all Jews support Israel. Speaking out for Palestinian human rights and their yearning for freedom is in no way related to anti-Semitism, though the Israeli government does its best to obscure that. And yes, there are anti-Semites who support Palestinian rights. They have no place in any movement for justice, which Palestinian leaders of the movement have made very clear.
We also know that in the last several months, leading Black scholars and activists, from Angela Davis to Marc Lamont Hill to Michelle Alexander have spoken out strongly on behalf of Palestinians--and found themselves targeted in return. The policing of people of color, including Ilhan Omar, who speak out on Palestine--the higher standards to which they are held, and the assumptions of bad faith by which their words are judged make their leadership on this issue all the more remarkable, but it means they are also paying an almost unbearable cost.
The exhaustion and rage that so many people--Muslims, Palestinians, Black people, Jews of color, and Jews who support Palestinian rights--are feeling as these battles continue to play out does have one silver lining. The only antidote to the pro-Israel lobby is building a strong, grassroots movement of people willing to stand up for Palestinian rights. That's what ended U.S. support for apartheid in South Africa, its what won limited civil rights victories for Black Americans, and it's what shifted American views on gay marriage over the course of ten short years. And that's what we're seeing today.
It is no surprise that the first elected officials defending Palestinian human rights are facing such fierce opposition from defenders of the status quo. Omar herself is not backing down, firing back at her critics: "Being opposed to Netanyahu and the occupation is not the same as being anti-Semitic. I am grateful to the many Jewish allies who have spoken out and said the same... We must be willing to combat hate of all kinds while also calling out oppression of all kinds."
Omar will be joined by many more, but only if we're willing and able to fight to defend them--by speaking about anti-Semitism with precision, by challenging racism and islamophobia, and by holding our institutions and elected officials accountable.
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