"Well-worn tropes"

Abdul el-Sayed with a purveyor of "well-worn tropes".

Michigan "Democratic" senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed released his financial disclosure on Monday. In the documents, it was revealed that he has rental properties in Dubai, Bangalore, and Ann Arbor. The Dubai and Bangalore properties are in his wife's name, while they own the Ann Arbor property jointly.

Now, look. I don't much care about this, aside from the hypocrisy of a "working class hero" being part of the rentier class which he and his co-factionalists excoriate. The Dubai and Bangalore properties were part of an inheritance, and many people own both a domicile and a rental property in the US. None of this concerns me.

But while researching this piece, I came across a quote I found rather interesting:

El-Sayed of Ann Arbor indicated the properties listed in his disclosure were inherited by his wife’s family and put in the names of her parents and siblings.

“I wonder why they’re so focused on foreign properties of somebody with a name like mine,” El-Sayed said. “Do you think it might fit within a well-worn trope?”

 [Emphasis mine.]

A "well-worn trope". Mr. el-Sayed, what might that "well-worn trope" be? That you have loyalties outside of the United States? That you might be compromised somehow by who you are and where you came from. That you are somehow "other" because of your faith or ethnicity?

Of course, you know where I'm going with all this.

It has been a "well-worn trope" on both the radical right and left that American Jews are fifth columnists, who support Israel over the US. They can't be trusted. They will always put their ethnicity and religion above the national good. 

And it is a "well-worn trope" trotted out by the likes of Mr. el-Sayed. Jews across public life are being hounded out of it unless they abjure any defense of Israel, call it a genocidal state, and declare that they support its destruction. These Jews, of course, will be allowed to live on sufferance in whatever country will take them, much as they have for the two millennia before the founding of the State in 1948.

One of my first pieces for the defunct The People's View was a defense of Israel. I remember one comment, coming in with the usual canard that Israel was a Jewish ethno-state and as such had no legitimacy to exist. Now, aside from countries like the US and Canada, which are problematic examples, I know, I would like to be informed of what nations around the globe are not in some way or fashion "ethno-states". Let's look at Israel's neighbors. Please enlighten me as to which of these nations are pluralistic polities not based on ethnicity or religion. Jordan? Egypt? Iraq. (The Kurds know well what Arab Iraq meant for them.)

Mr. el-Sayed is insulted at the line of questioning directed at him over his properties. And I will say this: I agree. As long as all is done legally and ethically, his being a landlord is the least of his red flags. And I'm sure his supporters feel the same. But at the same time, those same supporters will engage in the most vile invective against their fellow-Michiganders who are both Jewish and aver the right of the world's only Jewish state to exist. Because, obviously, it is the only ethno-state in human history, an aberration never encountered in recorded time.

Perhaps we should, as a nation, dispense with these calumnies and focus on things that matter. We should, perhaps, debate what will provide decent lives for American citizens, rather than making a century-long struggle in the Middle East the litmus test for morality. It might be a step towards making our politics better and responsive to the actual cares and concerns of the average American.

It's just a thought.