No sooner had the controversy erupted over Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitic tweets about AIPAC and the “Israel lobby,” than likeminded Middle East studies academics were rushing to her defense. After all, Omar’s comments are standard fare for the field’s anti-Israel, pro-BDS professoriate.
Indeed, UC Berkeley’s Hatem Bazian (whose response to this critical tweet from Adam Milstein was telling) heralded the election of Omar—and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib—in a December 2018 op-ed as “the arrival of a wave that will bring a measurable change” in “US support for the Zionist state,” and a sign that the “Democratic Party grassroots no longer have the same commitment to Israel.”
We can’t say we weren’t warned.
