On Monday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” bestselling author Andrew Klavan discusses the accusations of anti-Semitism leveled at Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and what that means in the fight against the anti-Semitic movement. Transcript and video below.
Just take a look at Ilhan Omar, she’s being chased by reporters and being interviewed about her comments — take a look and see if this looks like a person (a) who’s sorry or (b) who’s worried about any kind of real punishment other than this kind of finger-wagging:
Reporter: “Were you surprised by the criticism?”
Omar: “Always surprised”
Reporter: “Are you worried about losing committee assignments?”
Omar: “Absolutely not”
I mean, absolutely not worried about losing a committee assignment. Oh, I’m always surprised by criticism because, like AOC, she has this utter confidence born of ignorance and maybe nastiness, as well. That’s not a woman who looks sorry to me. That is not a woman who looks like she made a mistake — this is something she knows she’s going to get away with. Why? Because the Democratic Party is increasingly anti-Israel and, thereby, through that an anti-Semitic party. Seventy-nine percent, almost 80%, of Republicans sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians. according to a Pew survey last year. Democrats 27% for Israel and 25% for the Palestinians. I’m not sure what the rest of the people think.
In 2016, I’m reading this from The Wall Street Journal, “dozens of Black Lives Matters groups released a platform accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid.” There’s the demonization part again, “and endorsing the boycott,” there’s the delegitimization part, “divestment and sanctions.” “In 2017, the Democratic Socialists of America overwhelmingly endorsed BDS, the divestment and boycott movement at its National Conference, upon which the room erupted in chants of ‘from the river to the sea Palestine will be free'” — and that means pushing five to six million Jews into the sea, that’s what it means it means, destroying those people and destroying that country. Two Democrats the socialist group has propelled to Congress, Rashida Talib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they are also anti-Israel. You know in a lot of ways, all week long I’ve been talking about losing the idea of original sin, losing the idea that the Founders knew so well, you only have to read the Federalist Papers — that people suck, that people are flawed, that people given power will misuse power. If you read the Federalist Papers, every word virtually is trying to create this device in the Constitution that will keep people from doing what they naturally do — which is abuse each other.
That notion comes to us through an idea of God, which comes to us through Jesus, who comes to us through the Jews. Even the idea of the Jews killing Jesus, which makes no more sense than saying “white people held slaves — all white people held slaves” or “all black people commit crime.” Saying that Jews killed Jesus is nonsense, but even that idea is a way of denying what is the real truth, which is that mankind killed God, because mankind doesn’t like God, because in the face of God they understand their own smallness and their own sinfulness and their own brokenness. The Jews and the religion that the Jews spread through the West, formed the West, that shaped the West, that gave the West most of the good things that it has through Jesus Christ, that’s why people hate the Jews. They want to get rid of that because then they can do what they want and then they can say, “oh, you know we don’t have to really preserve any power to God, we don’t have to worry about original sin, just give me all the power, I’ll take care of the energy, it’s going to be fine. I’ll run the businesses, I’ll do what needs to be done.” It’s all related to the same thing, it is this idea of perfection which makes people the enemies of God and makes people the enemies of the Jews.
By the way, this has happened on the Right, too. You know, William F. Buckley expelled the Jew-haters from the conservative movement and really improved the conservative movement by doing that, but it happens wherever people go wrong, wherever people lose sight of the moral realities that the West has taught them. Anti-Semitism springs up — it is not reserved to the Left but it is part of the Left going crazy. It is a marker, it’s the Devil’s flagpole, anti-Semitism is the Devil’s flagpole that goes up wherever bad thoughts, bad ideas, bad philosophy are infesting a movement and that’s what’s happening to the Left now.