It's Official: Refusing to Pledge Allegiance to the State of Israel is Anti-Semitic

The definitive write-up of yesterday's vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on an anti-Semitism resolution camouflaged within a broader "anti-hate" resolution is Barry Grey's "Democrats push through resolution branding Rep. Omar’s criticism of Israel as 'anti-Semitic' ."

Reading the newspaper yesterday at lunch, the reporting was such that it was not clear that any resolution would be voted. Pelosi pulled the original resolution on anti-Semitism, the one backed by key members of New York's Jewish congressional delegation, following a revolt of her freshman rank'n'file.

But a new, more inclusive anti-bigotry resolution was cobbled together which included white supremacy and anti-Muslim hatred, and that's the resolution that passed overwhelming yesterday, 407-to-23.

This vote, ambiguous and watered down as it is, has to be interpreted as a significant victory for the forces fighting desperately to maintain a capsizing status quo. Criticism of the state of Israel is now deemed anti-Semitic in mainstream discourse.

Grey explains how the incident involving an appearance by Ilhan Omar, Minnesota's representative for the 5th CD, at a bookstore metastasized into the latest anti-Semitism frenzy:

Last week, speaking at a Washington DC book store, Omar complained of demands that she be thrown off of the Foreign Relations Committee, saying she should not be compelled to declare “allegiance to a foreign country.” This was seized on by Rep. Eliot Engel, a hard-line Zionist who chairs the House Foreign Relations Committee, who called her remarks an “anti-Semitic trope” echoing slanders of Jews as disloyal aliens. Engel demanded Omar apologize once again and began drawing up a condemnatory resolution.

This is important. Omar never accused Jews of being AIPAC shills or having dual loyalty. Omar merely stated the obvious: She should not, as an elected member of congress, have to pledge fealty to Israel. The "dual loyalty" implication is a leap produced in the fevered brain of stalwarts to a collapsing "centrism."

No better example of this fevered, cockeyed anti-Semitism overreach is Ted Deutch's quote from yesterday's House vote:

“We are having this debate because of the language of one of our colleagues, language that suggests Jews like me who serve in the United States in Congress and whose father earned a purple heart fighting the Nazis in the Battle of the Bulge, that we are not loyal Americans,” Representative Ted Deutch, Democrat of Florida, said Thursday morning in an emotional speech on the House floor.

Of course Omar said nothing of the sort. All she said, the most that can be implied from her words, is that she -- she -- should not have to pledge allegiance to Israel. She is right.

But even a suggestion that one doesn't wish to publicly proclaim allegiance to Israel is now being peddled in the mainstream as proof of anti-Semitism.

Amazing! What chutzpah. And unsustainable I should think.