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IS IT ILHAN OMAR’S DEMOCRATIC PARTY NOW?
The battle to isolate the unapologetic pro-BDS user of anti-Semitic tropes has been lost. That leaves pro-Israel Democrats with some uncomfortable questions By Jonathan Tobin
Austin is a Texas college town better known these days for its trend-setting music scene than for being the capital of the Lone Star State. But last week, it also provided a test case that may say a great deal about the direction of the Democratic Party and the very uncomfortable dilemma facing pro-Israel Jewish Democrats.
What happened was that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) was invited to be the keynote speaker at a citywide Iftar dinner there. That a local Muslim community would want to host her is hardly surprising. Omar is seen as a role model in the sense that she is, along with her friend Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), both elected last November, one of the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress. As someone who wears a hijab even on the floor of the House of Representatives, her career is especially inspiring to Muslim Americans.
But unfortunately, Omar is more than just an illustration of how the American dream still works to provide immigrants and minorities with unlimited opportunities to succeed.
The first indication I received that something had gone awry at Australia’s best university was in a criminology class titled ‘Violence, Trauma, and Reconciliation.’ According to the University of Melbourne handbook, this class ‘considers the forms of trauma people experience as a response to… forms of violence and explores how this trauma propels calls for apologies, truth commissions, retribution, and torture.’ The instructor, Dr. Juliet Rogers, devoted a lecture to female genital mutilation—a natural enough topic for a class on trauma. In Rogers’s view, however, the true source of trauma was not the practice of FGM itself, but the ‘violence’ of anti-FGM laws. After all, Western societies pressure women into body modification in the form of ear piercings—so who are we to pass judgment on those who practice clitorectomies and infibulations on children? And isn’t it true that legislators’ supposed concern with FGM is actually motivated by ‘Islamophobia’?
MARC LAMONT HILL SLAMS MIZRAHI JEWS AS ‘IDENTITY CATEGORY’ OF PALESTINIANS (Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post, May 22)
https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Marc-Lamont-Hill-slams-Mizrahi-Jews-as
In a Facebook post on May 20 slamming Hen Mazzig’s article in The LA Times, American academic and activist Marc Lamont Hill described Mizrahi Jews as an “identity category” that had been detached “from Palestinian identity.”…Hill’s latest excoriation of Israel, posted to his 90,000 followers, followed Mazzig’s argument that Israel is not a country of “privileged and powerful white Europeans.” Mazzig sought to emphasize the role of Mizrahi Jews in Israeli history and condemned the tendency of critics to define Israelis as Ashkenazi Jews alone…
In a Facebook post on May 20 slamming Hen Mazzig’s article in The LA Times, American academic and activist Marc Lamont Hill described Mizrahi Jews as an “identity category” that had been detached “from Palestinian identity.”…Hill’s latest excoriation of Israel, posted to his 90,000 followers, followed Mazzig’s argument that Israel is not a country of “privileged and powerful white Europeans.” Mazzig sought to emphasize the role of Mizrahi Jews in Israeli history and condemned the tendency of critics to define Israelis as Ashkenazi Jews alone…
I think I am in shock…HAMAS LEADER ISMAIL HANIYEH MAY BE CHARGED AS WAR CRIMINAL (Batya Jerenberg, Times of Israel, May 22)
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