Osama Abuirshaid, the executive director of American Muslims for Palestine, recently gave an interview to Jordanian television about the Congressional vote on aid to help Israel replenish its store of Iron Dome missiles, so greatly depleted when 1,500 of them were fired to intercept incoming missiles during the war with Hamas in Gaza. An additional write-up on his rant is here: “American Muslims for Palestine director: ‘Israel is a parasite that sucks the blood of America,’” JNS, September 27, 2021:
The executive director of American Muslims for Palestine said in an interview last week that Israel is a parasite that sucks America’s blood, and that accusations of anti-Semitism “are no longer influential.”
Speaking with Jordan’s Yarmouk TV on Sept. 22 about the recent removal of funding for Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system from U.S. budget legislation, Osama Abuirshaid said, “We are witnessing the closing of the ranks, and an emphasis on the force that supports Palestine within the Democratic Party.”…
Osama Abuirshaid spoke too soon. It is true that the $1 billion in funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missiles was removed from the budget bill, but a day later it was reintroduced as a separate bill, and two days later it passed in the House, 430 to 9. The “closing of the ranks” was by those 430 representatives who voted for, not against, Israel.
Israel is a “parasite that sucks America’s blood”? Does Israel “suck America’s blood” when it spends nearly all the military aid money it receives, as it is required to do, on American weaponry? When it promptly shares its jaw-dropping advances in military technology, that no other country can offer, with America? When it provides the U.S. with extensive intelligence about terror groups both in the Middle East and around the world, far more than is provided by any other American ally? When it has managed to delay Iran’s nuclear program through repeated acts of derring-do? When even now the Jewish state continues to keep the ayatollahs rattled with “mysterious explosions” at petrochemical plants, and electricity plants, all around the country?
When Abuirshaid dismisses charges of antisemitism as “no longer influential,” presumably he means no one any longer pays attention to such charges. Is this true? Haven’t people lost their jobs, or not been hired, or been the subject of ferocious criticism, when they were found to have posted antisemitic remarks on social media in the past, or said something that could reasonably be construed as antisemitic (e.g., talking about “rich Jews” who “control the media”)? Think only of Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Imran Khan, or its Foreign Minister Shah Mahmoud Qureshi, both of whom felt compelled to deny they had made antisemitic remarks. Think of Jeremy Corbyn’s preposterous insistence that he was “not antisemitic.” Ilhan Omar similarly felt compelled to lie, in denying she was antisemitic, thereby demonstrating that, pace Abuirshaid, she did not believe such charges should be ignored. Nemi el-Hassan, a Muslim who was about to host a German television show on science, was recently axed when her participation in an anti-Israel march – wearing a keffiyeh and shouting against the Jewish state – as well as antisemitic tweets she made several years ago, were discovered. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was stripped of all her committee assignments in the House after she made posts comparing mask mandates to Nazi laws curtailing freedoms for Jews, comparisons that, in trivializing the Holocaust, were deemed antisemitic. Antisemitism may be acceptable in Abuirshaid’s vivid imagination and among his fellow Muslims, but by no means is that the case in the wider world. At least, not yet.
Abuirshaid can spout his nonsense to a Jordanian audience, because he knows perfectly well that those Jordanians likely have no idea that the line item for the Iron Dome missile funding was passed overwhelmingly, with 98% of the House voting for, and only 2% voting against. When Osama claims that the majority of the Democratic base was “more supportive of Palestine than the Republicans,” that is true, but that’s only because there is no discernible Republican support for “Palestine,” while a handful of far-left Congressional Democrats, consisting of the four members of “the Squad” and four fellow travelers (and a lone Republican who was only concerned, he explained, with saving money), are “more supportive…of Palestine.” His claim that American Jews “were also more supportive of Palestine” is not borne out by the evidence. According to the Pew Opinion Poll, eight out of ten U.S. Jews say caring about Israel is an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them. Nearly six in ten say they personally feel an emotional attachment to Israel.
“Their concept of support obviously differs from the Arab, or Eastern, notions here [in Jordan]. It is not that they want to go back to the source of the problem and view Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea as occupied land, but they believe that the Palestinians deserve to live,” he said.
He’s setting a low bar: he thinks that American Jews should be considered supporters of “Palestine” if they “believe that the Palestinians deserve to live.” My word. Surely that covers just about every American Jew and every non-Jew, too. Sure. They deserve to live, but must not be allowed to squeeze Israel back into the 1949 armistice lines, or to make that tiny Jewish state any tinier than it already is.
Modern Israel, he continued, “represents the ugly face of racial segregation, of apartheid.”
One more time, I’ll post the paragraph that always needs re-posting whenever Israel is accused of being an “apartheid state”:
In Israel, this “apartheid state,” Arabs sit in the Knesset, serve on the Supreme Court, go abroad as ambassadors for their country. The chairman of the largest bank in Israel, Bank Leumi, is an Arab. Jews and Arabs study together in universities and technical institutes. Jews and Arabs work together In factories and offices. Jews and Arabs receive medical care in the same hospitals, where they are treated by both Jewish and Arab medical personnel. Jews and Arabs play on the same sports teams and in the same orchestras. Jews and Arabs own businesses – Jews and Arabs own businesses –from restaurants to high-tech start-ups–together. The only difference in treatment is that Jews must, while Arabs may, join the IDF.
“Israel has become a partisan issue. There is no longer a political consensus about Israel. Criticizing Israel is no longer tantamount to political suicide,” said Abuirshaid.
True, you can criticize Israel, even in the way that Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar do, and still be reelected in a handful of districts. But not everywhere, not even in many places. Again, look at the voting on the Iron Dome bill: 430 to 9. Isn’t that a startling example of “political consensus”? Or look at the lopsided votes on the 10-year $38 billion aid package that was proposed by, and passed during, the Obama Administration. There are, of course, in the left-wing anti-Israel segments of the media plenty of wishful-thinking articles about Israel “losing support.” So far, it hasn’t happened. There was a slight uptick in Palestinian support during the 11-day war in Gaza; the same thing happens during every Israeli war with Hamas or Hezbollah, when the IDF cannot avoid striking civilian buildings where weapons are stored. A month after each war, support for the Palestinians returns to its low pre-war level, and support for Israel returns to its prewar levels.
The Jewish state, he said, “is a case of a parasite living off the American body. America is going through an economic crisis. America is suffering strategically. It is suffering in many places in the world. It is withdrawing from many places in the world—from Afghanistan, from the Middle East, from other places, because it wants to focus its energies on the rising Chinese dragon. Nevertheless, Israel pulls America back. It sucks the blood of America, and scatters its attention.”
Is America really going through an “economic crisis,” because of the pandemic, that is worse than that which other countries now endure? There are no signs of that. And surely the American economy’s occasional hiccups cannot be compared to the economic basket cases of Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Gaza, the P.A.-run territories, and Jordan itself.
How does Israel “pull America back” into the Middle East? The American military is already in the region, and has been for years, but not because Israel had arranged it. The Americans are at their airbase at al-Udeid in Qatar and their naval base in Bahrain; their main task has been to prevent disruption of the shipping lanes in the Gulf, through which so much of the world’s oil travels. In addition to those bases in Qatar and Bahrain, there are detachments of thousands of servicemen in Iraq and Syria, determined to prevent a reemergence of the Islamic State.
Israel is not “pulling America back” to the region; Israelis are not eager to have the Americans getting back into the business, alone or as a member of the Quartet, of peacemaking between the Palestinians and the Jewish state. Nor is Israel “pulling back” the U.S. into the region to threaten Iran. Iran has been threatening the U.S., the Great Satan, since 1979. Let’s not forget that the Islamic Republic’s insensate hostility toward America, first observed by the world when Iranian students took over the American embassy in Tehran and held its occupants hostage for 444 days, has only increased ever since. No march or rally in Iran in the last forty-two years has been complete without an enthusiastic stomping on, and setting fire to, the American flag, accompanied by the chant of “Death to America.” Iran’s threat both to oil shipments, and to oil production — think of the Iran-supplied missiles with which the Houthis in Yemen have hit Saudi oil installations. Think too of the threat to Iraq’s sectarian balancing act from the IRGC-supported Kata’ib Hezbollah militia. Consider the mortal danger, to both Lebanon and Israel, that the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah presents. Washington remains in the region, ably backed up by the most powerful military power in the region, which also happens to be America’s unswervable ally, Israel.
Abuirshaid acknowledged that his words would draw accusations of antisemitism, but said that such accusations no longer mattered.
Accusations of antisemitism no longer matter? They have mattered to Nemi el-Hasan, Ilhan Omar, Jeremy Corbyn, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Prime Minister Imran Khan, Shah Mahmoud Qureshi, Mahathir Mohamed, and a great many others.
“These are facts. What I am saying is considered to be anti-Semitic, and I will be accused of [anti-Semitism], but these accusations are no longer influential, because they are illogical. There is no electricity or clean water in some American cities, but we do have $1 billion to give to Israel—on top of the $3.8 billion we give Israel every year—so that it can develop the so-called Iron Dome and continue killing the Palestinian people with American missiles,” he said.
What is Osama Abuirshaid talking about? “No electricity or clean water in some American cities”? Yes, after major hurricanes, there may occasionally be “no electricity or clean water” in the handful of places that have ben hit the hardest, but that deprivation lasts for at most a few weeks. Abuirshaid talks as if there is some kind of permanent impoverishment, a lack of the basics, water and electricity, in the U.S., and therefore, we should not be giving aid money to — watch for it — Israel. But the aid money we provide to Israel is “the best investment we can make…the biggest bang for our buck,” as Joe Biden said in 1986. Israel is a source of endless inventiveness, including advances in military technology, such as the Iron Dome missile defense system and an airborne laser weapon to shoot down drones and other flying targets, and much more, including advances in cyberwarfare that have not been made public and likely will never be — and all of which it shares with its American ally.
Israel’s Mossad has helped to keep at bay the terror groups – Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad– that threaten not just the Jewish state but ultimately, all Infidels. Mossad has also been the single most effective actor in slowing down Iran’s nuclear program.
U.S. Navy Captain William Pennington, the commanding officer of the USS George H.W. Bush, has cited U.S.-Israeli intelligence sharing and other forms of strategic cooperation going back years. “We are very tightly linked with our colleagues and partners and allies from the Israel Defense Forces and have been for many, many years,” he said. “There is a tremendous network of shared intelligence.”
No other American ally – not even Canada or the U.K. — has proved in the past few decades so valuable an ally as Israel has been. As former Prime Minister Netanyahu said in 2017 when he was on board the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush, along with everything else Israel provides, it is also “a mighty aircraft carrier” for the U.S.
When Abuirshaid complains about the money given to Israel, he ignores what we get in return. Not just advanced military technology, nor Mossad feats of derring-do, but an ally that shares our values, and will never abandon us.
And why does he single out the aid given to Israel as uniquely responsible for those electricity blackouts and water shortages in the U.S. he claims are so common in American cities? Why isn’t the aid given to other countries equally responsible? Since 1978, Egypt has received $80 billion from the U.S.; Pakistan has been given $78.3 billion in aid since the 1960s; Jordan has received a total of $26 billion in aid from the U.S. by 2020, and will receive another $1.65 billion this year. Just those three countries have received close to $200 billion in aid. But far outstripping that aid are the amounts the U.S. has spent – some $4-5 trillion – in trying to pacify two Muslim countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, and make them into Western-style democracies. Shouldn’t Abuirshaid have mentioned that vain enterprise, and those colossal sums?
Abuirshaid predicted that support for Israel would continue to decline in the United States, saying, “The more Americans know about Israel the less they like it.”
That does not appear to jibe with the remarks of those, including elected officials, who have taken part in visits to Israel, and came out not “liking Israel less” the more they found out about it. Instead, they seem to have been most impressed by 1) Visits to high-tech companies that showed why Israel is now known as the Start-Up nation 2) the integration of Israeli Arabs in universities, hospitals, offices, and factories, and 3) the tiny size of Israel, which makes visitors more keenly aware of the security threat, and Israel’s need to retain what strategic depth it currently possesses. Abuirshaid is free to make up any tall tale he likes about how “the more Americans know about Israel the less they like it,” but we are entitled to point to the evidence – the testimony of those visitors — that contradicts his fable.