It's an interesting controversy surrounding Representative Ilhan Omar. On the one hand, she is articulating a belief held among many on the left that Israel somehow calls all the shots in Washington. A superficial reading of Israeli policy certainly supports that reading. American support for Israel seems fixed and inflexible. Israel has been "doing bad things" for a while now, things that are in direct contradiction to stated US policy in the Palestinian territories. Also, you have the overt political alliance between Netanyahu's Likud party and the Republican Party. As long as Likud runs Israel, there is precious little reason for Democrats to support Israel, except for a general sympathy for the existence of the Israeli state.
As Josh Marshall points out, however, Omar has used increasingly dicey language to describe Israeli influence in Washington. This allows the debate to shift to whether this particular Muslim Congresswoman is somehow anti-Semitic. Of course, the real reason Israel has such staunch support on the right is the alliance between evangelical Christians and hard right Likud types. (Marshall notes this, too.) This is ironic, because the evangelicals want the Temple to be rebuilt so that Jesus can return and...presumably cast the Jews into eternal damnation. (I don't know the exact parameters of bonkers evangelical eschatology.)
There are a lot of very good reasons for Democrats to distance themselves from the Israeli government, while maintaining support for the people of Israel. Likud should absolutely pay a price for overtly intervening in American politics. (It wouldn't surprise me if some of the international ratfucking that went on in 2016 didn't have an Israeli component.) But if you are careless or inflammatory with your language when doing so, you allow people to change the discussion towards whether YOU are the problem.
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