Everyone remembers Ilhan Omar’s remark about American support for Israel: “It’s all about the Benjamins.” This was a reference to Jewish financial support for politicians being the only conceivable explanation for their support for Israel. Omar couldn’t imagine that anyone might support Israel for any other reason. She can’t imagine anyone being moved by Israel remaining a steadfast ally of the U.S. for its entire history or being impressed by the tiny country’s ability to defend itself successfully against three attempts on its young life, in 1948, 1967, and 1973, or admiring the scientific and entrepreneurial talent that has made Israel, famously, the Start-Up Nation. But, argues Daniel Pomerantz of Reality Check, her remarks about Jews and money are far worse than that. More on his claim can be found here: “Ilhan Omar Didn’t Say That Jews Are ‘Into Money’; It Was Far Worse,” by Daniel Pomerantz, Algemeiner, February 16, 2023:
With 11 million streams per episode, “The Joe Rogan Experience” boasts an audience almost 20 times CNN’s prime time news ratings, nearly double the subscription readership of The New York Times, and larger than most, if not all other episodic programs in any form of media. In short: what happens on Joe Rogan’s podcast, matters.
That’s why we must talk about what happened on February 4, when Rogan hosted Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti of the “Breaking Points” podcast. During a discussion about embattled Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN)’s infamous 2019 tweet “It’s all about the Benjamins” (a reference to Jews and money), Ball came to Omar’s defense saying “She shouldn’t have apologized” and Rogan agreed, saying “It’s not an antisemitic statement, I don’t think that is. Benjamins are money. You know, the idea that Jewish people are not into money is ridiculous. That’s like saying Italians aren’t into pizza.”
Joe Rogan clearly has his own problem with antisemitism – he cannot recognize it when it is so obvious, as in Omar’s remark about “the Benjamins.” Joe Rogan’s convinced that Jews are “into money” the way that Italians are “into pizza.”
It’s not clear whether Rogan shared this antisemitic trope out of malice, or merely out of ignorance. In either case, he had essentially misinformed his audience because Congresswoman Omar didn’t actually say that Jews are “into money.“ To the contrary, Omar made her infamous tweet in the context of several longer statements from around the same time: including one in which she claimed that pro-Israel groups exert control over the United States Congress by paying off its members, as well as another in which Omar questioned whether, as a group, American Jews owe their allegiance to a foreign country.
In sum, the Congresswoman has articulated a narrative in which Jews stand accused of being untrustworthy, disloyal citizens, who control America through the use of money. This is characteristically different from saying that Jews like money or Italians like pizza. To the contrary, Omar’s rhetoric almost precisely tracks the content and structure of the propaganda used by the Nazi party in the years leading up to Hitler’s Final Solution, as well as countless other leaders who sought to persecute and murder Jews.
Ilhan Omar was not saying that “Jews are into money.” She was saying that “Jews are into money” for a reason: money is used by Jews to control the American government, buying the support of American politicians for the sake of Israel. The Jews are “into money” not merely to enjoy it (the way Italians may “enjoy pizza”), but to put it to work for the sake of a foreign state – Israel – to which they owe their sole loyalty. They are reminiscent of the powerful Jewish bankers depicted in The Protocols of the Elder of Zion, who form an all-powerful secret cabal to control the world for the sake of world Jewry. The Protocols were, of course, written before Israel existed to become, as it is now, the main target of antisemites.
In his 1925 autobiographical manifesto “Mein Kampf,” Hitler blamed Germany’s Jews for controlling the country’s politics through money, destroying its economy, and undermining the state itself:
In economics, he [the Jew] undermines the state until the social enterprises which have become unprofitable are taken from the state and subjected to his financial control … In the political field he refuses the state the means for its self-preservation, destroys the foundations of all national self-maintenance and defense, destroys faith in the leadership, scoffs at its history and past, and drags everything that is truly great into the gutter.
Hitler’s specific threats against Jewish communities evolved over time, but the underlying philosophy remained firmly rooted in the idea that Jews use wealth to exert political control over others.
For example, in a 1941 speech to the Reichstag, Hilter blamed Jewish “financiers” for causing World War II, as well as the previous world war, saying, “If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging nations once more into a world war, then the result [will be] the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”
The Final Solution began six months later.
When Ilhan Omar said “It’s all about the Benjamins,” she didn’t mean that Jews “are into” money. According to her own statements, Omar meant that America’s support for Israel (one of its closest allies) and for American Jewish communities (one of America’s most loyal and most vulnerable minority groups) couldn’t possibly be the result of shared values or even American self interest, but rather the result of Jewish manipulation of the political system through the use of money. This idea isn’t true and it isn’t new: we’ve already seen where it leads.
This should not be seen as an issue of Democrats versus Republicans: Omar’s own party has more than once condemned her statements as being “antisemitic tropes” and “deeply offensive,” and in 2019, Congressional committees debated “House Resolution 241 – Condemning the anti-Semitic comments of Representative Ilhan Omar from Minnesota.”
However, the bill was subsequently watered down to a critique of antisemitism in general, and the Democratic House leadership allowed Omar to continue serving on the House Foreign Relations committee, a body that manages America’s relations with the world, including with its key ally, Israel. This year, the new Republican House leadership removed Omar from the Foreign Relations committee, sparking a renewed public debate about her antisemitic rhetoric.
Ilhan Omar did not merely claim, as Joe Rogan insisted on his program, that Jews are “into money” the way “Italians are into pizza.” They are into money, she has made clear, in order to control the American government for the sake of Israel, the only country to which they owe their loyalty. This is much worse than simply ascribing a love of money to them. This is Protocols-of-the-Elders-of-Zion stuff. it’s exactly what Hitler claims about “international Jewry” in Mein Kampf. Ilhan Omar needs to be shamed and shunned as a purveyor of such claims. Kicking her off the House Foreign Relations Committee was a good start in limiting the damage she can do to the U.S.-Israel relationship. Now she needs to be booted from Congress altogether. In Minnesota’s 10th Congressional District, the 2024 election can’t come fast enough.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Except that in Minnesota’s 10th District, she is such a lock that she can’t even be primaried in this heavily Dem district
So Rogan and Ball think Omar had nothing to apologize for for the ‘Benjamins’ remark. Do they also think that she and Rashida were justified in promoting BDS, and trying to visit Israel despite that? How about her many anti-HIndu statements, be it on Kashmir, India’s NPR law and so on? Did they think she ought to have apologized for that one?
somehistory says
100+
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Thank you, somehistory
somehistory says
You are very welcome, Infidel.
commonsense says
Same here!
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Thank you as well!
somehistory says
I agree with Mr. Pomerantz. That was my understanding when she said it…..bribes and payoffs to get what they wanted from politics and big businesses.
i elmi, alias and illegally a.k.a. i. omar, is a lying snake.
John ..Smith says
Yes Somehistory, she’s a lying snake and a truly awful woman.
somehistory says
Agree, John, Truly awful. Couldn’t be worse, imo.
kq6kq6kq6 says
Her comment on the 9/11 attack was the worst of all: “Somebody did something.” She ought to be censored for the rest of her life. And it would be nice if she were to be thrown out of the country.
OLD GUY says
How about a look at her finances and where they come from? Ilan Omar follows the Benjamin’s.
royrubba says
I wonder if her brother/husband is also an anti-Semite.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Brusband came long ago, and the marriage was just for the sake of immigration fraud. Her 2 kids are from her other previous husband, but now, she’s married to her campaign manager, who, it’s unclear whether he’s converted to islam
Scotsman48 says
This stupid wee dangerous lassie suggests that Jews are more aligned with Israel than America and yet she seems much more aligned to Somalia than America.
The bleeding heart morons changed the Law against covering of the head within the Halls of Congress in order that she can wear her fancy rags on her head, she said some people did something on 9/11, she constantly insults anybody that slightly disagrees with her by calling them racist sexist or that anti islamic word and yet she is thought of as a sound person in the Halls of Congress… WTF is wrong here.
I wonder if she would call all the muslims in Sri Lanka ”into money” as they control ALL the money changing shops on that island, or does she know that the President of the Bank of Israel is an Arab muslim born in Israel…
She not only should be kicked out of Congress but kicked out of America for lying on her Citizenship Application.