Is Ilhan Omar an anti-Semite? I don’t know. I can tell you that some of the things she’s written and said resonate with anti-Semitic tropes, and those who deny it should know that very well. But Omar may not have understood why images of Jews as disloyal, unjustly wealthy, or vested with magic powers that can “hypnotize the world” are bigoted. After all, she spent the formative years of her youth in Somalia, where such ideas linger below the surface of awareness.
There is a caste in that country known as the Yibir. The word means Hebrews, and the Yabir are stigmatized, even though they are Muslims, because they are thought to have Jewish roots. According to Wikipedia, they peddle goods and spiritual amulets along with folk remedies. These professions suggest that they have occult powers, a belief that also inspired the scenes of Jewish wizardry in the Nazi film Jew Suss. Perhaps this idea inflected Omar’s words because it seemed evident. But that’s precisely what’s scary.
Overt anti-Semitism, whether it’s expressed in rhetoric or mass-murder, can be dealt with by protests, legal remedies, and rituals of healing. We see it, we feel it, and we react to it. But comments that reveal an underlying bias are just as terrifying, because they prove that such attitudes have never gone away, despite the integration of Jews into the mainstream. The same people who cry at Schindler’s List and laugh at Seinfeld may also harbor ancient beliefs that Jews are uncanny or in some way supernatural. And so, we must contend with two varieties of anti-Semitism: the deliberate kind, which is relatively rare, and the more common evidence that Jews have yet to be considered ordinary.
There are Latino versions of the magic Jew (i.e. wearing a star of David as a talisman) which reveal a bias that is also a compliment. It can’t be called bigotry, but it is discomforting nonetheless. There are elements of black anti-Semitism that echo alt-right beliefs so bonkers that they can only reflect deep-seated myths–for example, the notion, expressed by Alice Walker, that Jews want to enslave black people, and that the proof is in the Talmud. And then there is the latest European fantasy that a group of half-human aliens called lizard people seek global domination, and many of them happen to be Jewish. Go figure!
Of course, the situation in Europe is worse than here. The recent spectacle of a float in a famous Belgian carnival, featuring Orthodox Jews with bulbous noses sitting on bags of money, is shocking, but not as upsetting as the insistence by Belgian officials that it was all in the satirical spirit of revelry. I have always felt that to live as a Jew in Europe is to stand apart from others, even other foreigners. I’m not surprised that some elements of the Gilets Jaunes have chanted anti-Semitic songs. Any crowd of strollers on the boulevards of Paris will include people who believe that Jews are magical or unduly powerful. But for most of those people, this attitude exists in a nether-region, covered over by layers of reason and shame, so it emerges as an uncomfortable tolerance. I accept that as an honest response to a horrific history, but even so, it makes me understand that Jews are set apart, and so they are apart, no matter how well they hide their difference. But this is not just a European syndrome. It’s how I feel in parts of America where Evangelicals believe I must migrate to Israel so that Jesus can return and inaugurate the Rapture. They aren’t bigots, but they have beliefs that are ultimately as distressing as Omar’s.
These ideas exist on the left, on the right, and in the center. That is the reason why many American Jews who are appalled by what Israel has become also feel that Jews need a state of their own to protect them against the possibility that, at some point of social crisis, age-old attitudes will trigger violence against us. Still, the perception of vulnerability is hardly limited to Jews. It is a corollary to what people of color must contend with, no matter how many champions, celebrities, or presidents they produce. Racial bias can exist alongside the most sincere homage–and everyone who is a victim of racism knows it. So do Jews.
We are a people designated as white by the American authorities at the time of the first census, but we have only recently ascended to that status in a social sense, and because our whiteness is a social fact, it is revocable. That makes it hard to deal with us if you are a victim of racism, because, while we are accorded skin privileges, we know that it may not always be the case. And so we are, let’s say sensitive, although it must seem to many people of color that we have no right to be. This is why the Congressional resolution against bigotry was such a fen. It seemed to privilege Jewish oppression, when so many groups are suffering from bigotry much more overt–and yet the danger Jews perceive is real as a potential. There is a tendency to see the present as the only source of bias, when in fact the past hovers over everyone’s identity and the future looms uncertain. As William Faulkner said: “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”
Many people have mocked the House resolution, but I regard it as a bridge between the present crisis and the future we are struggling to create. For the same reason, I’m willing to grant Omar the benefit of the doubt. She is engaged in the same tricky process that my ancestors undertook: to liberate herself from beliefs that, as the resolution which she voted for states, are not consonant with our ideals. I hope she finds a way to criticize Israeli policies with all the fury in her, but without tropes that subvert the power of her argument. It can be done, it should be done, and when it isn’t done, an apology is in order. We learn from our mistakes, as I tell my students. And it’s an article of faith to believe in what an apology promises: change.