Why on earth did the New York Times assign Jonathan Weisman to report about the latest unfair attack against Rep. Ilhan Omar over Israel/Palestine? The paper is supposed to strain mightily to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, but here it failed dismally.
Jonathan Weisman has a history of bias toward Ilhan Omar. In August 2019, his editors publicly demoted him for tweets he made about Democratic members of Congress, including Omar, when he suggested she was “not truly from the Midwest.” As the Washington Post noted, Weisman “deleted the tweets after they were roundly criticized as racist.”
Apparently Times editors have a short memory. Because last week, after Omar tweeted out about a virtual exchange with Secretary of State Antony Blinken that critics distorted, the Times gave the assignment to Weisman.
Weisman failed. His report said that “Ms. Omar had pressed Mr. Blinken for an investigation of human rights abuses by both Israeli security forces and Hamas.” Then, he added, “. . .on Twitter, she appeared to go further, comparing Israel and the United States not only to Hamas, which the State Department considers a terrorist group, but also to the Taliban.”
Both these statements are inaccurate. Omar wasn’t calling for a “new” investigation; she was asking Blinken about the already announced probes by the International Criminal Court. And despite Weisman’s sly use of “appeared to go further,” she was not equating the U.S., Hamas, Israel and the Taliban.
Instead, you have to ignore the Times and look at Omar’s original tweet to see what she really said. She included a 3-1/2 minute video segment of her polite exchange with Blinken, during which she makes perfect sense. She points out that the U.S. does not accept the validity of the International Criminal Court investigations into either Israel or the U.S. in Afghanistan. She then asks, quite reasonably, where Palestinians and Afghans can go for justice. Blinken evades her, by responding that Palestinians should seek justice from Israel, an assertion he’s too intelligent to actually believe.
Here’s how Omar’s tweet commented on the video of this encounter:
We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan and the Taliban.
How can anyone disagree with that simple, truthful statement?
A dozen Jewish Democrats misinterpreted Omar and disgracefully responded that she was being “offensive” and “misguided.” This time she didn’t back down, charging that their statement included “Islamophobic tropes.” She later displayed on Twitter just one example of the racist, threatening comments she gets every time she speaks out. And her progressive allies, in Congress and outside, rushed to her defense. Had this exchange happened just a few years ago she would have been left to twist slowly in the wind, alone. Instead, more than 50 progressive U.S. groups said clearly that “the repeated targeting of Rep. Omar is rooted in sexism, racism and anti-Muslim bigotry.”
There is an interesting footnote to the latest effort to smear Rep. Omar. It turns out that Hamas was not happy with her either. In a June 11 statement, in English, the organization called her remarks “very peculiar” because “she treated the resistance of the Palestinian people, the Israeli crimes in Palestine, and the US aggression in Afghanistan as an equal footing.”
H/T Michael Arria
If only Jonathan Weisman had the integrity to acknowledge that Israel sending precision bombs into homes that wiped out entire families, and into media buildings, warrants investigations. The number of casualties including little children was outrageous and unacceptable. When it comes to casualties, you cannot compare the numbers, the violence, and the deadlier weapons. It is time these apologist journalists stopped writing as if the two sides are comparable and equally matched.
Journalists like Weisman, Stephens, and others at the New York Times, simply love to keep that false narrative going.
Hamas should be upset. When it comes to war crimes, anything Hamas has ever done pales by comparison to the crimes of the US and Israel.
Ihan made the ‘mistake’ of charging Israel and the US with war crimes. I don’t which is worse, politically, here in the US. But, this is something that is NEVER discussed publicly by national politicians. Ihan is courageous in bringing the fore something that MUST be discussed and debated before our foreign policy ever has a chance to change for the better.
They hate her and distort her words, because she has a habit of speaking the truth and exposing their rampant hypocrisy when it comes to Israel.
When Omar casually pointed out that “It’s all about the Benjamins.” They lost their collective minds, because the worst kept secret in politics was outted in public and on record by and insider for America to see. Her democrat colleagues went into a feeding frenzy and immediately moved to censure her, not because they thought that it was anti-Semitic, but because they knew it was true and that their donors and lobbyist were royally pissed! By rushing into immediate action on her statement and not the context of her statement, they proved Omar’s point exactly. All those “Benjamins” apparently were more important to the party that their so-called progressive values and ideology.
Same with her latest comments, which shattered the illusion of Israeli democracy and accountability. The same politicians that recite chapter and verse from the AIPAC bible about, “shared American values”, “beacons of democracy”, and a “light unto nations” were exposed for ignoring the horrors and crimes that both countries enable and inflict on thousands of innocent civilians on a daily basis with impunity and a complete lack of accountability. Actions like Russia and Iran supplying weapons to Hamas and the Taliban, that they label state-sponsored terror, are no different to what Israel and the US are doing, only we label it “self-defense”.
She keeps saying the quiet part out loud and laying bare the cognitive dissonance of the the Democratic Party, especially in regards to Israel and only Israel. None of them truly believe that her comments and statement are anti-Semitic, but by the gods they know that using accusations of anti-set isn’t are an effective weapon in silencing dissent, very embarrassing public truths, and quashing any and all discussion on the matter,
It is encouraging to see the emergence of a broad consensus regarding the unacceptability of tropes — and memes too, perhaps.
It’s in fact incredible that people here can defend the imperial war party loyalist Omar and one more of her putdowns of the resistance:
“We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.”
Occupied and invaded peoples have a right to resist. Period. Which side are you on?