It is certainly no coincidence that Rep. Ilhan Omar proposed her notorious resolution affirming the right to boycott Israel last week in the midst of her public dispute with President Trump over her attacks on the American political system. Although many Democrats are nominally opposed to the BDS movement, they were nonetheless forced to mute their criticism of her and her resolution and to defend her against the President’s tweets, which many characterized as being racist. This despite the fact that the resolution’s preamble outrageously mentions the history of American boycott campaigns including boycotts of Nazi and South African products.
Sadly, we also see a connection between Omar’s pro-BDS resolution and the pass she got when the House failed to rebuke her by name over her anti-Semitic comments in March. Readers will recall that Omar created a firestorm with her comment that Jewish money was behind Congressional support for Israel. She then followed this up with a charge that, given their strong support for Israel, American Jews have a “dual loyalty” such that their fealty to the US is diluted.
These comments finally led to proposals that she be rebuked by her colleagues and removed from the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee, which has a key role in Middle East policy. However, a firestorm ensued with many House members balking at singling her out and insisting that she remain on the Foreign Affairs Committee. In the end Omar prevailed, with the House passing a resolution that simply condemned all racism, practiced by anyone. And no action was taken regarding her continuation on the committee.
What particularly rankles is that influential Jewish organizations didn’t get behind the effort to single out Omar and anti-Semitism. Thus, while the debate over what form the final resolution should would take was being held in the House and reported in the media, ADL leader Jonathan A. Greenblatt weighed in with a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressing support for the principle that “the entire Congress must be fully engaged in denouncing and rejecting all forms of hatred, racism, prejudice and discrimination wherever they are encountered.”
And after the resolution passed, Greenblatt welcomed it despite, as noted, its failure to refer to Omar by name, to limit its focus to her anti-Semitism, which had precipitated the controversy in the first place, and its failure to call for her removal from the foreign affairs
Jewish organizational failure to press for honest responses to challenges to our community will only encourage more of them.