Calculated retribution is a disgusting practice.

the thread title is right. AIPAC is not even among the top 50 in political donations among lobbying groups, if Ilhan wanted to make her point about getting money out of politics she had a lot of other better options to choose from, but she is anti-Semetic so she singled out the pro-Israel lobbying group.

58 co-sponsors, including Schumer and Booker.

Gallup poll has 64% of Americans sympathetic to Israel vs. Palestinians. 74% view Israel favorably. Democrats are more sympathetic to Israel than Palistine at 59%. Twice as many Americans say the US should put more pressure on the Palestinians than on the Israelis.

Now, I'm more sympathetic to Palestinians. I think the US government should put more pressure on the Israeli government. I think the bill to suppress the right to boycott is vile - and it definitely puts Booker on the bottom of my list of Dem's running for POTUS. But, they are popular views and politicians don't necessarily have to be bought in order to hold them.

Perhaps, but posting **** on a forum isn't really calculated retribution. And you know this. Probably everyone who offended you there is against the DP and you know that since they're all a bunch of libs.

This thread is a perfect example of why I never touch political discussions about Israel. They are pure aids, always. Tomdemaine is right, the left should just ignore Israel all together. There is no upside to it.

Do you think there is a 1:1 relation wrt money and influence?

Micro, if anything this forum has taught me that "lib" is a big tent iykwim.

uh, ACKSHUALLY she said ISRAEL was hypnotizing people & blinding the world to ISRAEL’s evil. she didn’t even mention Jews!

or when she “almost chuckles” at israel being called a democracy...again she’s only talking about ISRAEL.

the handwaving at Omar’s anti semitism would be funny of it weren’t so pathetic. like, even the Dems called on her to apologize, amd she did, but ppl are saying “she had nothing to apologize for”

lol wtf

Can Chyme be exiled from this thread? He's not here to post in good faith.

Israel should not be a third rail. You either gaf or you don't.

Schumer and Booker also take large amounts of money from pro-Israel groups! Schumer and Menendez also broke ranks with Democrats to oppose the Iran deal. They are better examples for my case than yours.

The polling is who cares. The public is not knowledgeable on the matter and their stance is largely informed by our government's stance. And ~no one votes on these issues. If you explained to a random sample of Americans that anti-BDS bill, pretty sure 90%+ would be confused and ask "doesn't that blatantly violate free speech?" It isn't a position you just happen upon because of a difference in beliefs.

I wouldn't exile him because bad faith is like 50% of all Republican lead scandles. I can't wait until the next election cycle when we get to hear from the President on down that Soros is here to steal the rightful sovereignty from true red blooded Americans via bamboozling minorities.

People like him shouldn't be allowed to post in threads about race issues when all he wants to do is dunk on libs after never calling out the racist BS his sides spews.

Yeah, but you're all doing it. The right absolutely does it with the Soros bull**** and being a big-tent party for nazis, and the left does it with **** like this. It's like the one thing people on the extreme left and extreme right have in common. She apologized, either one of the following two statements must therefore be true:

1. The apology was legitimate. She accepts that what she said was antisemitic and she will learn from it.

2. The apology was illegitimate. She made it for political expediency but believes she should not have had to apologize.

There is no option 3 here. I choose to believe option 1. Which option do you believe?

Since Option 3 is unavailable I'll go with c) It wasn't anti-Semitic but she knows better than to double down and try to defend herself, especially when she probably actually is sorry that it may have offended some people, so the apology is sincere with no implication of guilt.

Yeah man I'm pushing getting in trouble here I'm sure, but that literally the only time I can ever remember you brought up this 100% for sure sincere belief was when people were mad about a Nazi driving into a crowd of protestors the day it happened kind of gives away the game, buddy.

When reactionaries try to co-opt progressive values to own the libs reasonable people need to be able to identify bad faith and respond appropriately.

Chelsea Clinton got chummy with an actual white supremacist over their shared denouncing of Omar's tweet. Marks get played. Don't be a mark.

The Pittsburgh shooting was driven by fears that George Soros was funding refugee resettlement and specifically the migrant caravan to dilute the white share of the American electorate. That was the MAINSTREAM CONSERVATIVE VIEW at the time, though obviously we all forgot about the caravan the day after the election.

The Turner Diaries **** of Jewish masterminds using minorities as their foot soldiers against a disarmed white silent majority is a "trope"(cool word that everyone started saying yesterday all at the same time) that you see echoed in the NRA's everyday video output, it's standard and unremarked on.

One tweet from a black Muslim that got a little too cute with the music emoji gets a whole news cycle and a hundred post thread, though. That tells you not just the power of AIPAC, but also their priorities.


(Netanyahu's son is a straight up Pepe-posting 4chan dip****! Israel is chummy with Orban!)

Not touching AIPAC again because we weren't getting anywhere.

On another (Omar-related) note--do you guys think the BDS movement is anti-Semitic?

I don't support it, but I go back and forth on whether conceptually it is anti-Semitic or not, so genuine question here.

Absolutely not. I wouldn't buy from any Israeli companies that operate in the occupied territories or any that I know support occupation and I think it's reasonable to totally boycott Israel.

In theory BDS is not anti-semitic. But for some reason a lot of people involved happen to be anti-semites.

BDS is 100% not anti-Semitic. It shows solidarity with Palestine while pressuring Israel in a way that has tangible effects.

Lotta countries it's reasonable to boycott though - including the USA.

I lean towards thinking it isn't anti-Semitic.

Feel free to say this is hypocritical given our earlier conversation, but I find BDS to be much closer to the line than criticism of AIPAC like we discussed earlier.

I guess to me BDS conceptually would continue until Israel didn't exist (at least not in anything close to its current form) any more. That's not something I want and something that strikes me as pretty anti-Semitic, in concept.

not antisemitic and lol at carrying the water for the altright on this.

The "don't be a mark" thing goes both ways here, just like a lot of centrists fall for insanely bad faith claims of anti-semitism about Israel criticism, a lot of liberals and leftists critical of Israel seem to take a "big tent" view on Palestinian solidarity and end up getting chummy with Farrakhan and ****.


It's a simple rule, not always easy to follow, but that's the cost of doing business. The "hey does this person act like this principle is a sincere belief or is it obviously adopted out of one-time convenience for just this issue" system is nearly unbeaten.