8 March 14 • 2019
jn
views
Yiddish Limerick
Purim
Mir hern Haman’
s name, and noisily we jeer
Ahashverosh der kenig un Esther zahynen here.
Mir kenen trinken un zahyn shiker
Farbalt nisht mein liqueur.
A fraylikher yontef far mir un far dir.
Mir hern- we hear
Der kenig- the king
Zahynen- are
Mir kenen trinken- we can drink
Un zahyn shiker- And be drunk
Falbalt nisht- don’
t hide
Mein- my
A fraylikher yontef- a happy holiday
Sar mir un far dir- for me and for you
By Rachel Kapen
W
hen Rep. Ilhan Omar uses classic
anti-Jewish tropes — when she denounc-
es Jews and Zionists as disloyal, mon-
ey-grubbing hypnotists who control U.S. policy —
she tramples the line between criticizing Israel and
anti-Semitism.
She denounces Israel advocacy
as dual loyalty — but only when
Israel is involved. She ignores the
support other Americans have
for other countries — such as
Pakistini-Americans for Pakistan,
Indian-Americans for India, Irish-
Americans for Ireland.
She appeared to apologize for
only having “unknowingly used” a bad choice of
words, which she purportedly only now understood
amounted to “an anti-semitic[sic] trope … which
is unfortunate and offensive.
” On Feb. 27, Rep.
Omar candidly stated that she had not apologized
for her tweet being anti-Semitic, either wittingly or
unwittingly, merely for “for the way that my words
made people feel.
”
Omar’
s words and deeds are clearly anti-Semitic
as defined in the State Department definition of
anti-Semitism, particularly with regard to viewing
the Jews as “conspiring to harm humanity” and feed-
ing “the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of
Jews controlling the media, economy, government or
other societal institutions.
”
Also, in Omar’
s gutter criticism of Israel as an
“apartheid regime,
” she is clearly “denying the Jewish
people their right to self determination, e.g., by
claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a
racist endeavor.
”
The fight against anti-Semitism and racism cannot
be won if Congress indulges, ignores and finesses
Rep. Omar’
s anti-Semitism and anti-Israel extrem-
ism.
The March 7 House Resolution condemning all
types of hatred is a watered-down resolution that
ignores Omar’
s virulent and reprehensible anti-Se-
mitic statements and her association with terrorist
organizations that promote the murder of Jews.
Congress should compel Omar to resign from
the House Foreign Relations Committee and from
Congress. ■
Sheldon L. Freilich is president, Zionist Organization of America -
Michigan Region
A Shameful
Record
commentary
Sheldon L.
Freilich
T
his has been the era of
the anti-Semitic “trope,”
with the word popping
up in hundreds of news stories
since the 2016 campaign. In
short, tropes are
phrases or images
that evoke classic
anti-Semitic ideas
rather than state
them explicitly.
It’
s a long list: the
dual loyalty trope,
the blood libel,
the clannishness
charge, the global conspiracy
motif and the control-the-media
mantras (to name a few).
When Donald Trump’
s closing
argument at the end of the 2016
campaign invoked “the global
special interests” that “don’
t have
your good in mind” — and then
featured images of a financier,
a banker and the chair of the
Federal Reserve, all Jews — he
was accused of employing the
“trope” of Jewish global control.
When Hungary’
s government
ran a campaign against the
pro-democracy philanthropist
George Soros featuring his smil-
ing face and the slogan “don’
t
let him get the last laugh,” some
said it recalled the Nazi-era
trope of the “laughing Jew.”
When freshman Rep. Ilhan
Omar complained that U.S. pol-
icy toward Israel is “all about
the Benjamins, baby,” politicians
and observers insisted that
the Minnesota Democrat had
invoked age-old stereotypes of
Jewish power and control. Her
recent comment about those
with influence having “alle-
giance to a foreign country” is
a well-worn anti-Semitic trope
about Jewish attachments to
Israel making them disloyal to
the United States.
Anti-Semites usually make
it pretty easy for us to identify
them. They scrawl swastikas on
Jewish gravestones. They bluntly
describe Jewish conspiracies and
quote the classics of anti-Sem-
itism like Mein Kampf or The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
They make it clear that “no Jews
are allowed.”
But “tropes” are anti-Semi-
tism once (at least) removed.
Intentional users employ a
trope as code hoping to avoid
the anti-Semitism charge while
dog-whistling their audiences.
(The Hebrew expression for
such circumlocution is hamevin
yavin — literally “those who
understand will understand.”)
Tropes are often easy to
identify because they can be
deployed unknowingly by those
who couldn’
t accidentally, say,
deface a synagogue. As a result,
tropes allow those charged with
anti-Semitism a degree of deni-
ability. ■
Andrew Silow-Carroll is editor of JTA.org.
Andrew Silow-
Carroll
commentary
An Idiot’s Guide to Anti-Semitic Tropes
CORRECTION:
In “Being Me” (page 10, March 7), the story
stated that Azriel Reuven Apap was born female.
The story should have said he was assigned
female at birth.