Daniella Greenbaum Davis

Ilhan Omar is a confused anti-Semite. In 2012, she thought Israel (translation: the Jews) controlled the world through hypnosis. Now, seven years later, she believes something else: ‘it’s all about the Benjamins.’ Both ideas are classic anti-Semitic tropes. In a piece for Commentary magazine late last month, Abe Greenwald dissected the trope that had inspired Omar’s 2012 tweet. He writes: ‘The history of mystical anti-Semitism is long indeed. It predates Christendom and thrived, at times, long afterward. Martin Luther wrote that “a Jew is as full of idolatry and sorcery as nine cows have hair on their backs, that is: without number and without end.

Jews in this country have long been accused of holding dual loyalties. This week, that canard was brought back into the media and political landscape not by white supremacists chanting ‘Jews will not replace us’, but by Rashida Tlaib, a freshman Democrat, and a woman of color. In response to a bill that would, among other things, challenge the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, Tlaib said that supporters of the legislation had ‘forgot what country they represent.’ Those words are familiar to anyone who’s read anything about anti-Semitic rhetoric. The implication is that Jews, especially Jewish public servants, are all nothing more than foreign agents – traitors, in other words.