Ilhan
Omar en Rashida Tlaib* zijn de eerste vrouwelijke moslim leden van het VS congres en deze 2 timmeren nogal aan de weg. Zo heeft Omar een berg
stront over zich heen gekregen voor het openbaren van het feit dat
AIPAC, een pro-Israëlische lobbygroep, ieder jaar weer congresleden omkoopt met 4 miljoen dollar voor politici die 'de
goede zaak' dienen, ofwel die zonder enige kritiek pal staan voor de
fascistische apartheidsstaat Israël en alle enorme oorlogsmisdaden (om niet te zeggen misdaden tegen de menselijkheid) die dit gestolen land begaat tegen de Palestijnen.....
Het
gaat overigens niet alleen om het pal staan voor Israël, maar ook
elke kritiek die op deze terreurstaat wordt geuit afdoen als
antisemitisme, behoort tot de taak van deze omgekochte congresleden en dat heeft Omar gemerkt zoals je
al kon lezen. Het feit dat Omar kritiek durft te hebben op AIPAC is
al reden genoeg om haar als antisemiet weg te zetten......
De
schrijver van dit artikel is Alexander Rubinstein en werd eerder
gepubliceerd op MintPress News, door mij overgenomen van Anti-Media.
Verbaas je zoals ik over de hysterische manier waarop men in de VS
elke komma kritiek op Israël afdoet als antisemitisch, datzelfde geldt overigens voor alle westerse landen, neem de kritiek op Jeremy Corbyn, Labour en oppositieleider in GB....**
Laten
we hopen dat Omar en Tlaib zich uiteindelijk niet de mond laten
snoeren, de invloed van Israël op de politiek in de VS is ongeëvenaard en zelfs al zou het Russiagate sprookje waar zijn (wat
het niet is), zou die beïnvloeding niet in de schaduw kunnen staan
van de enorme invloed die Israël heeft op de politiek in de VS......
Zo sprak de zwaar corrupte oorlogsmisdadiger Netanyahu in 2015 het VS congres toe, waar hij de richting wilde bepalen van de politiek die de leden zouden moeten volgen inzake
Iran, dit daar hij het niet eens was met Obama...) Daarmee schoffeerde deze Palestijnenslachter niet alleen
Obama, maar schopte hij zelfs tegen het kleine beetje democratie dat nog over is in de VS.....
Ilhan
Omar is Right: AIPAC Influences Congress With $4 Million Every Year
February
11, 2019 at 10:04 pm
(MPN) — What
unites Republicans and Democrats, a former Jewish terrorist, the
Republican leader in the House of Representatives, Nikki Haley,
Chelsea Clinton and Liz Cheney? A Muslim lady with a mouth and some
opinions, apparently. Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has been the
subject of bipartisan bullying that has reached a fever pitch since
the lawmaker explicitly called out the number one Israeli lobby group
in the U.S. — the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Earlier
this year, Omar made heads explode in the halls of power after she
denounced the U.S.-backed coup attempt in Venezuela. Now, even
the leader of her own party in her own chamber of Congress – House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi – is joining a chorus of detractors accusing
Omar of anti-Semitism for correctly characterizing the business of
lobbying.
While
this is not the first time that Omar has come under fire for
criticizing Israel, the current saga began on Sunday when journalist
Glenn Greenwald tweeted an article by the Israeli daily
newspaper Haaretz that trumpeted calls from House
Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to “take action” against
Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). McCarthy did not specify which
statements he opposed, but called the situation “equal” or worse
than that of Rep. Steve King (R-IA) who was removed from his
committee assignments by his party after he questioned when “white
supremacy” had become “offensive.”
Tlaib
and Omar are the first two Muslim women in Congress, while Tlaib is
the first Palestinian-American. Both have supported the Boycott
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a nonviolent campaign to
economically pressure Israel into compliance with international and
humanitarian law.
MintPress
News has
previously covered dubious
accusations of
anti-Semitism against Tlaib after she took a stand against a
free-speech-crushing bill favored by — you guessed it — the
Israel lobby. Meanwhile, other lawmakers are attempting
to block Tlaib’s
planned delegation to the illegally occupied West Bank.
In
response to the attack from the Republican House leader, ACLU Human
Rights Director Jamil Dakwar quipped that
Congressman McCarthy may “want to revive McCarthyism.”
McCarthy
himself received $33,000 from NorPAC, “an AIPAC affiliate, in the
last election cycle,” reportedthe
online publication Jewish
Worker.
Meanwhile, McCarthy himself has been accused of spreading
anti-Semitic tropes, warning that three Jewish, liberal mega-donors,
including George Soros, were trying to “buy” the midterm
elections, which were to take place the following day. That
tweet has
since been deleted.
About
the Benjamins
Upon
seeing the report, Omar did not pull any punches. In an apparent pun
on a slang term for $100 bills and the prime minister of Israel’s
first name, she tweeted that “it’s all about the Benjamins baby,”
which is a quote from a 1990’s Puff Daddy song.
Then,
an opinion editor at the Jewish magazine The Forward,
Batya Ungar-Sargon, reposted the tweet, telling her followers that
she’d “love to know who Ilhan Omar thinks is paying American
politicians to be pro-Israel, though I think I can guess.”
Omar
clapped back with just six characters, tweeting “AIPAC!” — the
acronym for the largest and most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in
the United States. In fact, AIPAC spends more than $3.5
million every year to
influence Congress to be more favorable towards Israel.
Ungar-Sargon
then attempted to speak on behalf of all American Jews, responding to
Omar that she should “learn how to talk about Jews in a
non-anti-Semitic way.” Anti-Zionist American Jews promptly shut
her down in
replies.
89 people are talking about this
But
some powerful people with Twitter accounts took exception the the
congresswoman’s identification of a pro-Israel lobby group as an
entity that “is paying American politicians to be pro-Israel.”
One is left to wonder what causes AIPAC doles out the contents of its
propaganda war-chest for if not to influence lawmakers on Israel. The
takeaway from this line of analysis is that money has no influence in
politics, which is patently absurd.
Yet
AIPAC’s own mission
statement claims
“AIPAC urges all members of Congress to support Israel through
foreign aid, government partnerships, joint anti-terrorism efforts.”
Here,
those that charge Omar with anti-Semitism reveal their own. By
leveling charges of bigotry against critics of the Israel lobby,
Israel’s defenders equate Jewishness with allegiance to Israel, or
Zionism. In keeping with this estimation, Jews that do not condone
the apartheid project underway in Palestine are branded
“self-hating.”
Despite
Rep. Omar’s statement about AIPAC being self-evident, the remark
riled the likes of former Trump Administration Ambassador to the UN
and pro- Israel Nikki
Haley,
who once said, “When I come to AIPAC, I am with friends.”
Haley’s pro-Israel
track record at
the international body prompted an Israeli cartoonist to satirize her
departure with an image of a United Nations handyman telling Haley,
who is packing her bags, that she forgot her “second flag” — an
Israeli one. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin even called Haley a
“true ambassador” for Israel.
A
major Washington pile-on
Lawmakers
who pounced on Omar include: Sen.
Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Rep.
Doug Collins (R-GA), Sen.
Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rep.
Max Rose (D-NY), Rep.
Brad Schneider (D-IL), Rep.
Sean Maloney (D-NY), Rep.
Donna Shalala (D-FL), Rep.
Anthony Brindisi (D-NY), Rep.
Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Sen.
Krysten Sinema (D-AZ), Rep.
Lois Frankel (D-FL), Rep.
Eric Swalwell (D-CA), Sen.
Tom Cotton (R-AR), Rep.
Alcee Hastings (D-FL), Sen.
Martha McSally (R-AZ), Rep.
Liz Cheney (R-WY),
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), who are
trying to shore up support for a
letter to
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) hailing Israel as a “proud and
stable democracy with robust protections for minorities” and
calling for “swift action” to address the “recent rhetoric.”
Pelosi
responded hours later with a joint
statement with
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Majority Whip James Clyburn
(D-SC), Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), and
Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA) “condemning anti-Semitic comments made
over Twitter by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.”
Chelsea
Clinton assured several on Twitter that she would “reach out to
Omar.” When Omar agreed, saying “we must call out smears from the
GOP and their allies,” Clinton agreed. That was until Ashley
Goldberg stepped in, tweeting that Clinton “outright said there is
a problem with antisemitism [sic] on both sides and Ilhan Omar
clearly said she only cares about what she can do to depict it as
only a problem with the GOP.”
But
the conversation took a turn, culminating in Clinton’s vowing to
“google people” before engaging with them from then on out, after
journalist Hannah Gais pointed
out that
Goldberg was photographed at a white supremacist conference in 2016
hosted by Richard Spencer. Goldberg, an anti-communist Jewish media
personality, also used
to date Neo-Nazi
leader Matthew Heimbach, the founder of the now-defunct
Traditionalist Workers Party.
“AIPAC’s
non-influence in Congress”
Not
everyone bought it hook-line-and-sinker, however. Khaled Elgindy, a
senior fellow at the neoconservative Brookings
Institution, tweeted that
he was “in the market for a bridge,” and asked The
Forward editor
Ungar-Sargon to “please enlighten us on AIPAC’s non-influence in
Congress.”
A
spokesperson for Omar told Politico in
response to the firestorm caused by the representative’s
tweets
that the remarks “speak for themselves.”
But
a cursory examination of the legacy AIPAC has left since it opened
shop the DC speak even greater volumes. The lobby group is not
itself run by Israel, allowing it to avoid registration under the
Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law that forces foreign lobby
groups to be more transparent. That’s because I.L. Kenen, the
founder of AIPAC, created a “legal loophole by which AIPAC is
defined not as a lobby for a foreign state but for Americans who
support that state. It’s a critical distinction that makes AIPAC’s
dominance over U.S. Middle East policy possible,” according to
former AIPAC employee M.J. Rosenberg.
AIPAC
continues its practice of using loopholes to further its agenda
today. A recent documentaryproduced
by Al
Jazeera but
censored by Qatar, which funds the outlet, showed how one fundraiser
for a congressional candidate, organized by an unofficial “AIPAC
group,” circumvented laws on maximum individual political
contributions by pooling donors’ grants together and doling out the
official donations evenly among participants.
And
the organization’s sway over Congress is difficult to dispute.
Promotional literature for the annual AIPAC policy conference in
Washington has touted the idea that it would be “attended by more
members of Congress than almost any other event.” Steve Rosen, a
former AIPAC executive, would tell people that he “could take out a
napkin at any Senate hangout and get signatures of support for one
issue or another from scores of senators,” according to Connie
Bruck in The
New Yorker.
As
AIPAC’s former policy director, Rosen and “Iran specialist” at
AIPAC Keith Weissman met with Larry Franklin, a top Pentagon analyst
working on Iran, prior to Franklin leaking a draft presidential
directive “that proposed a tougher policy on Iran, which included
consideration of covert action towards regime change,” according
to Democracy
Now.
That document made its way into AIPAC’s hands, which passed it on
to Israeli officials.
Former
AIPAC President David Steiner was even forced to resign after audio
was leaked of him bragging about how he was negotiating with Bill
Clinton’s presidential campaign to appoint people to key posts in
his administration. Steiner ultimately recanted and apologized to
both AIPAC and Bill Clinton.
====================================
Nogmaals: dan te bedenken dat men Rusland op valse gronden beschuldigt van inmenging in de VS politiek..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
* Ilhan Omar, heeft sinds 2017 een zetel in het lagerhuis van Minnesota voor de Minnesota Demcratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Rashida Tlaib is van de Democratische Partij voor wie zij de vertegenwoordiger is van het 13de (congressionele) district van Michigan. (toevoeging ter verduidelijking gemaakt op 10 maart 2019)