The Atlantic

Ilhan Omar Just Made It Harder to Have a Nuanced Debate About Israel

The Minnesota congresswoman has given credence to caricatures of critics of Israel.
Source: Joshua Roberts / Reuters

In the anti-Semitic imagination, Jews run the world through a global conspiracy of cash and power. This belief is both old and resilient, and in the past seven decades, anti-Semites have relied on this framework to explain the tight alliance between the United States and Israel.

On Sunday night, a freshman representative from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, cheerfully repeated this anti-Semitic trope, implying that AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, pays politicians to support Israel. Top Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have called on Omar to “reject anti-Semitism in all forms,” , while Republicans have argued that her comments reveal the depth of anti-Israel sentiment in the Democratic Party. “I unequivocally apologize,” Omar said in a tweeted statement on Monday. “At the same time, I reaffirm

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic3 min read
They Rode the Rails, Made Friends, and Fell Out of Love With America
The open road is the great American literary device. Whether the example is Jack Kerouac or Tracy Chapman, the national canon is full of travel tales that observe America’s idiosyncrasies and inequalities, its dark corners and lost wanderers, but ult
The Atlantic6 min read
There’s Just One Problem With Gun Buybacks
One warm North Carolina fall morning, a platoon of Durham County Sheriff’s Office employees was enjoying an exhibit of historical firearms in a church parking lot. They were on duty, tasked with running a gun buyback, an event at which citizens can t
The Atlantic8 min readAmerican Government
The Return of the John Birch Society
Michael Smart chuckled as he thought back to their banishment. Truthfully he couldn’t say for sure what the problem had been, why it was that in 2012, the John Birch Society—the far-right organization historically steeped in conspiracism and oppositi

Related Books & Audiobooks