Source: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Even in the most frustrating of stories, there are
heroes. In the case of the watered-down piece of “anti-hate” dreck
passed by the Congress Thursday, it is the 23 Republicans who refused to play
the ridiculous game laid out before them.
What started as pressure to denounce the repeated
anti-Semitic words of freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar was quickly broadened to protect
her from the specific sting of rebuke. The idea arose of a broad
pronouncement against anti-Semitism, a worthy idea since it does seem to be on
the rise in general.
But that wasn’t the point.
The point was that we have a member of Congress who
strung together completely intentional pronouncements borrowing from the
longtime index cards of Jew-hatred: Jews as money-hungry, Jews as sinister hypnotists,
support for Israel as “allegiance to a foreign country.”
As Democrats scrambled for cover, her backers reminded us
that she had issued some apologies (the sincerity of which should soon be made
clear), and- my favorite—“she is learning.”
The woman is 37 years old. She occupies a seat in
Congress. She did not just land from space. She knew exactly what
she was saying, and meant every word. As such, a resolution against those
specific offenses was wholly appropriate. That said, if a proper resolution
had passed, I would have supported allowing her to keep her seat on the House
Foreign Relations Committee. A proper consequence could have been a reset
button, an opportunity to see if a lesson was learned.
As it is, she’s learned a lesson all right. She has
learned that today’s Democratic party will willfully blind itself to her
prejudices to avoid provoking the brash, young congressional generation of
which she is a part.
Realizing that even a broad resolution against
anti-Semitism would have had her name all over it symbolically, the whole vote
was pounded into mush: an expression of opposition to “hate,” allowing everyone
to supply a favored definition.
For some, maybe it was Omar’s derision of Jews.
For others, it was an opportunity to weaponize their favorite myth of
equivalency—the assertion that President Trump is somehow equally guilty
because of extreme vetting, comments about illegal immigrants or some other
characteristic they wish to stigmatize.
If Rep. Steve King can be drawn and quartered for
comments taken out of context, it would seem a Democrat displaying confirmable
bigotry might be a worthy recipient of disapproval from colleagues. But
not in 2019, and not in a House under Democrat control.
That very control is the subject of some curiosity.
This whole drama was a nightmare for Nancy Pelosi, who might ultimately
have asked Omar to lean into the strike zone and take one for the team for the
greater good. This entire story could have been on its way to forgotten
within days, presuming no recurrences.
As it is, Omar is unchastened, a valuable message is
undelivered, and a learning opportunity is lost. But every day brings the
possibility of new information. Perhaps someone will ask her the
bottom-line question that reveals the truthful Jew-hater: Does Israel
have the right to exist?
Whether we get that answer or not, this episode has
attracted fresh occasions for politicization, as liberals ducking incoming fire
seek to deflect with a rousing game of whaboutism. Omar may have stubbed her
toe on unfortunate words, they said, but what about those virulent white
nationalists who marched in Charlottesville?
What about them, indeed. Any gathering of riled-up
idiots showing themselves in a rare display of their dying breed is more
pathetic than anything else. It is unsettling to see the scattered
evidence that these cave-dwellers still exist, but they always crawl back under
their rocks, doomed to the obscurity they deserve.
Meanwhile, someone harboring a brand of bigotry that
seems to be on the rise just got elected to Congress. Which is more
daunting?
I care very little about categorizing anti-Semitism as
“from the left” or “from the right.” It is all to be condemned. But
make no mistake: a Republican spreading Omar’s poisonous words would have been
run out of town on a rail. If bigotry can be found on all sides, it is
vital for accountability to take hold on both sides as well.
