Most of the Jewish community has feverishly and piously supported last week’s Democrat-sponsored Resolution condemning President Trump’s remarks against Ilhan Omar. Omar, of course, is a notorious, unrepentant anti-Semite and daily demonizer of Israel.  But she has become, for many Jews, a heroine, a civil rights star, a noble cause.  Enjoying such support, Omar rewarded the Jewish community by immediately announcing, after the Resolution’s passage, a piece of legislation demanding that Congress vote in favor of BDS against Israel and her Jewish inhabitants.

Reading a prepared statement, Rep. Omar introduces her resolution (YouTube screen grab)

Seeing that Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL (formerly Special Assistant to Barak Obama) chose to define President Trump’s accurate criticism of Omar’s anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism as simply “playing politics,” Omar understands that the establishment Jewish community seems willing to live with her anti-Jewish prejudices if in service to damaging Donald Trump.  She sees the weakness among American Jewry, and it has now emboldened her to introduce BDS legislation. She knows the Jews in Congress and the Jews in the cities will not stand in her way.  Indeed, many are choosing her.

The criticism against the President was not limited to secular types such as Greenblatt, but also came from some rabbis, like Reform Rabbi Rick Jacobs. One Orthodox rabbi, Yaakov Menken, sadly, published a piece in the Daily Wire where he referred to the President’s words as “obnoxious,” “damaging”, “half-baked”, and “offensive”.

Such statements are emboldening Omar.  She smells the self-righteousness, the virtue-signaling, and the political correctness emanating from Jews and some rabbis.  The day after the Resolution, she responded to the criticisms of the President that were so widespread in the Jewish community. What did she do? She compared the State of Israel to the Nazis of the 1930s and categorized a need to boycott Israel as an American value and reminiscent of how America boycotted Nazi Germany. 

Greenblatt and others attacked the one man who has, more than anyone else, stood up for Israel and against anti-Semitism.  Their focus was more on parsing Trump’s words instead of focusing on the real and dangerous goals of Omar and her allies.  They interpreted the President’s words in the most extreme and critical fashion, thereby providing Omar with succor. 

Beyond everything else, President Trump is valiantly fighting for the dignity of America while others are seizing an opportunity for scoring “virtue" points.  Omar, not Trump, is the threat. Her appetite, her aggressiveness, grows in proportion to those choosing to pounce on the President and provide her with victim-status.

Like many of us, the President was irked by remarks where Omar lauded the foreign country of her birth, Somalia, a notoriously brutal and cruel regime, while incessantly indicting America’s founding as primarily based on genocide, slavery, and racism.  She sees no difference between Al Qaeda in Somalia and our society here in America that provided her asylum.  Any self-respecting American should, like the President, be insulted and disgusted by her negative view of America. 

Omar is not simply someone with a gripe or two; rather, she is intent on demoralizing Americans and making them despise their country, referring to it as almost no better than some of the worst places on earth.  Only people who themselves loathe America can find nothing wrong with someone who spurns the very country that gave her safe haven.

The President did not call for her exile, rather that she first fix the problems in the country, Somalia, that she lauds and afterwards return here to fix the problems she associates with America.  The truth is, as many have suggested, if she so dislikes America, wouldn’t it be best for her to live in a place that she favors?  People that come to such a wonderful and generous country such as America should not spend most of their energy trying to make citizens dislike their own country. In contrast, my great grandfather, Samuel, came to America and continued thinking it was the luckiest thing that ever happened to him.

There is much more to Omar than meets the eye. She is not some tender compassion-crusader. She is not so innocent, nor a Rosa Parks. She is brazen, impudent, unrelentingly aggressive, and seems to enjoy punching Americans in the face while mocking our love of this country. I suspect she fits into a more dangerous category, representing forces intent on upending America as we know it.

In one of history’s most confounding moments, too many in the American Jewish community are championing the very person who wants to destroy Israel and, no doubt, those Jews supportive of Israel. Too many Jews see their protection, identification and fraternity with the intersectional groups, even those hostile and those calling Israel and Jews Nazis. It is a grave mistake. They are blind to the particulars staring them in the face and view life through the generalizations they made decades ago. For example, they still fear American nationalism and conservative Christians, despite the positive sentiments and numerous acts of kindness from them toward the Jewish community throughout the last century.

Omar and BDS are co-joined with Hamas, the very Hamas that this week called for the killing of Jews worldwide. We shouldn't be searching for ways to champion her as a kindred victim. However, most American Jews are more concerned with intersectional feelings and goals than Jewish safety, and are willing to have the State of Israel, and its Jewish inhabitants, called Nazis if that's what their racist intersectional heroines insist.

Too many live in an ersatz cocoon, according to a newly defined Jewishness, far removed from Judaism.  Sadly, much of American Jewishness, as opposed to authentic Judaism, has made Israel and the safety and survival of the Jewish people secondary, or insignificant, when weighed against their preferred identity as “progressive” members of a global society. This is the curse of universalism, which has afflicted the Jewish people since the early 19th century. 

A grateful and self-respecting people would give the benefit of the doubt to Mr. Trump, the man who has befriended them so much and who fights for the country, America, that has provided Jews with so much blessing.  Indeed, Jews who have prospered in this golden land should be in the forefront defeating a person like Omar who has, as her primary purpose, the besmirching of America and Israel. The purpose of her treacherous, stealth campaign is to make Americans feel so negative about their country that they want to replace our historic ethos and system with an amalgamation of Marxism and Shariah.

Rabbi Aryeh Spero is president of Caucus for America and author of Push Back.