AIPAC’s supporters have never concealed the fact that the group holds enormous power in Washington. In 2011, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote: “I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.” AIPAC itself boasts that “the United States Congress has provided Israel with the strongest support of any institution in the world” in large part because of the “involvement in the political process” of its donors.

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The connections between US imperialism and Zionism should be obvious to anyone paying attention, but it needs to be emphasized at moments like this when progressives (especially Muslim progressives) like Omar are being attacked with outrageous claims of Jew-hatred. The fact is, this latest episode has very little to do with antisemitism. The Israeli government is a significant booster of antisemitic governments and movements in Hungary, Ukraine, Poland, and the United States (and its relationship with Jair Bolsonaro’s new government in Brazil flirts with antisemitic strands as well).

This history goes back at least a half century: Israel has often been happy to join the United States in backing antisemitic governments and movements across the world, specifically in Latin America, provided it fulfilled their settler-colonial or imperialist aims. During my AIPAC years, I watched from the inside as America’s most powerful “pro-Israel” organization hobnobbed and glad-handed numerous elements, especially segments of the Christian right, that were actively or passively complicit in antisemitic politics and networks.

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People like Omar are not being repeatedly (and most likely systematically) targeted because they are antisemitic. They’re not even being targeted because they’re critical of Israel per se. They’re being targeted because they challenge an eighty-years-long bipartisan imperialist consensus that is finally showing signs of fraying. The goal is to prevent the very kind of subversive moments Omar elicited last week during her questioning of unrepentant war criminal Elliot Abrams — moments that, if they added up, would have a real shot at finally moving us toward a vision of America beyond empire.

Gabbard, 37, was on a three-day visit to Iowa, her second time this year in the first-in-the-nation caucus state, looking to make her mark in a crowded field of contenders.

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Gabbard promoted a platform that includes Medicare for all, criminal justice reform, including ending federal prohibition of marijuana and discouraging privatized prisons. She delivered a strong anti-war, anti-intervention message for “ending regime-change wars.”

“Stop throwing people in prison for smoking a joint and instead go after those like Purdue Pharma who are proliferating their opioids on our streets and taking people’s lives,” she said.

The Hawaiian National Guard veteran, who was deployed twice to the Middle East, also has served in the Hawaii Legislature and the Honolulu City Council.