Muslims can be proud of Omar and Tlaib in the U.S. Congress

By Martin Love

NORTH CAROLINA - Muslims worldwide can be proud that the most courageous and quite possibly, with tremendous luck and time, the most effective U.S. Congressional representative in years may turn out to be Ilhan Omar who won election from a district in Minnesota last November. And it is all about remarkable courage, something that even her detractors must eventually recognize -- as it is human nature to recognize real courage when it is so evident.

Omar has touched, and is still touching, the so-called “third rail” of political discourse in the U.S. by calling out the absurdities and dangers of U.S. foreign policies that for decades have awarded overweening support for criminal Zionism and which has resulted, directly and indirectly, in more carnage and human suffering and financial waste than any other aspect of U.S. foreign policies and actions in the Middle East. And this is because for years the most basic posture of various U.S. administrations and the U.S. Congress has revolved around giving Israel anything it has wanted well before doing much else.

Speaking last week at a forum at a Washington bookstore along with freshman Rep, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Omar says she fears any and everything she and Tlaib might say about Israel is or would be construed as “anti-Semitic” because both women are Muslims, and that such insidious charges prevent a broader debate about Israel’s 70 year plus mistreatment of Holy Land natives, the Palestinians. She is not at all incorrect about this.

Earlier, Omar used Twitter to express her dismay over the powerful influence the AIPAC lobby has had. And last week she made this statement: “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it’s okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country.” And added: “Why is it okay for me to talk about the influence of the National Rifle Association, or fossil fuel industries or Big Pharma and not talk about another powerful lobbying group that is influencing policy?”

With that, some Jewish leaders said they were appalled by Omar’s suggestion that Jewish-Americans have divided loyalties, reviving an old allegedly anti-Semitic trope. However, and this is important, some notable progressive Jews came to Omar’s defense saying that it is not inherently anti-Semitic to criticize Israeli government policies or AIPAC. Meanwhile, AIPAC slammed Omar’s suggestion of dual loyalties, as expected, as did long entrenched members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. Where is all this sound and fury going?

For one thing, you can bet that come the next election cycle for Ilhan Omar, some Jews and most all devout Zionists will be mounting a huge effort to have her, and Rashida Tlaib, ejected from Congress by voters if only because of bias against Muslims, at bottom a reaction against 9/11 because the perps were, by the official account, Muslim. (In one view, if it’s the case that the U.S. government always has to have an “enemy” to justify its prodigal military spending, it may be that “Muslims” replaced “Communists” in the dark corners of the unofficial American psyche as the designated “enemy” – given the fall of the Soviet Union. And regarding Iran, the hostage crisis at the beginning of the Islamic Republic no doubt gave the U.S. government ammunition to vilify Iran for the past 40 years, pushed by the Zionists, since Iran has advocated for the oppressed at least in Palestine.)

It’s a given that Omar and Tlaib will be targeted for defeat in the next election cycle, but at the same time, it’s quite possible that by then the debate about undue Zionist influence in the U.S. will have finally achieved some sort of critical mass and more and more Americans, heretofore totally ignorant about the realities of faux Israeli “democracy” and Zionist cruelties – since they, the Zionists, always want to play the victims – will have different ideas about right and wrong and re-elect both Omar and Tlaib. And make no mistake, when Americans are fully apprised of the true facts of any particular situation, their generally fair-minded and fundamentally decent nature comes to the fore. And what in fact has held it back for decades with regard to Middle East matters has been such a volume of disinformation and propaganda, and money spent to create it, that even Josef Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, would be thoroughly surprised. It was, after all, Goebbels who once stated that if a lie is big enough and if it is stated often enough, people come to believe it – including the liar.

One argument the Zionists and lovers of modern Israel incessantly trot out is their loud complaint that detractors single out Israel especially for criticism when there are so many OTHER governments around the world that are allegedly less “democratic” and cruel than Israel’s. They point, to cite just one example, to the Islamic Republic as a country where human rights have not – allegedly – been championed strongly enough. Whether that’s true or not only visitors to Iran can rightfully decide for themselves. But the deep reason Israel is ever singled out for derision, if it has been, is because IF the mighty dam of misguided public opinion regarding the Zionists begins to crack and reveal truths to the masses, particularly in the U.S., it will mark the beginning of the end of some serious governmental corruption in the U.S. (and in other Western countries like the U.K) and of policies and actions damaging to the perceptions of Islam and to some Muslim countries. It may well mark the beginning of the end of U.S. warmongering, foolish “regime change” wars of choice, and a variety of other ills that have plagued the Middle East.

One can only, for now, blissfully imagine a Holy Land where Palestinians, Muslim or Christian, and Jews are treated as equal citizens, and what that would mean for the flowering of the Middle East as a whole and for Islam. But in preparation for this, if it should ever come, it would be hastened if countries like Iran where there has long been more “democracy” than in Israel or Saudi Arabia, make sure that there is continued movement towards good government that literally works for the betterment of the lives of all citizens and not just for some powerful, relatively wealthy elite.