Opinion: The good news about the Democrats’ resolution on anti-Semitism
Rep. Ilhan Omar leaves a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in Washington on Thursday. By Paul Waldman and Paul Waldman Opinion writer covering politics Email Bio Follow Greg Sargent Greg Sargent Opinion writer covering national politics Email Bio Follow March 7 at 3:58 PM The resolution in the House of Representatives in response to comments made by Rep.
Earlier this week, Omar was quoted saying, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” a criticism of the pressure that she says members of Congress are under to support Israel. Critics argued that Omar was evoking the idea of “dual loyalty,” an old anti-Semitic trope, and that therefore her comments were anti-Semitic. Views differed on whether that was a fair criticism, to say the least.
That certainly would have made Republicans happy, since they were harshly criticizing Omar and demanding that she lose her seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. But the first version of the resolution to be circulated widely with the approval of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi omitted any mention of Omar.
Nobody’s going to say that this process wasn’t painful, but Democrats managed to work it out. And in the end, the framing that Republicans had hoped to impose on the debate was basically cast aside.The divisions over this issue were real and part of the ferment and argument among Democrats that we’re seeing on many fronts.
President Trump had tweeted that “It is shameful that House Democrats won’t take a stronger stand against Anti-Semitism in their conference." Given his years of bigotry toward Muslims and Latino immigrants, and his refusal to unambiguously condemn white supremacist violence and murder, Trump had obviously hoped to privilege outrage over anti-Semitism, in effect asserting his right to express his own bigoted sentiments with impunity.
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