So much for tolerance and diversity!! Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are being denounced as anti-semitic by Jewish colleagues and various others who, for their own reasons, are hurrying to jump on this bandwagon. The majority of critics seem to be especially incensed by the suggestion that Republican support for Israel is maintained by the Israel Lobby’s healthy donations to Republican politicians. What an idea!

It is a fundamental misrepresentation of Israeli foreign policy to fashion an identification between all Jews and the nation-state of Israel. If this deception succeeds, then opinion must declare any criticism of Israel, any support for Israel’s oppressed minority to be anti-semitic. What if we were to substitute another American proxy, Saudi-Arabia, for Israel in this formula, would politicians denounce any criticism of Saudi-Arabia as anti-islamicism? 

In American political discourse, “anti-semitism” has become, like “racism,” a vague, default denunciation that is based on a stereotype whereby any criticism of any Jewish person(s) for whatever reason can be called anti-semitism. And, as with racism, those who promote charges of anti-semitism are employing a concept now so vague as to prevent honest discussion of the phenomena to which this term may allude, but conveniently cannot precisely describe.