For Congressman Marie Newman, ‘It’s All About the Benjamins!’

Not the least of the offenses committed by the small army of anti-Israel propagandists is their questioning the patriotism of those who support Israel, their suggesting that being pro-Israel is inimical to American interests, and furthermore, their maintaining that it cannot possibly be the cogency of their arguments that wins political backing for Israel, but the financial support that is provided to pro-Israel candidates. Ilhan Omar, she who described the 9/11 atrocity as when “some people did something,” also famously said that support for Israel in Washington was “all about the benjamins!”

Now we have a report about a member of Congress from Chicago, Marie Newman, who is a reliably anti-Israel Squadrette, whose squalid tale tells us more “about the benjamins” than Ilhan Omar would ever have wished us to learn.

Her story is here: “A ‘Palestine-Firster’ Scandal Comes to the US Congress,” by Ben Cohen, JNS.org, February 6, 2022:

During Barack Obama’s presidency, when diplomatic tensions between Israel and the United States sank to rarely seen lows, the term “Israel-Firster” was concocted by the Jewish state’s adversaries as a means of demeaning its advocates and supporters in America.

To be an “Israel-Firster” meant that you put the interests of Israel above those of the United States and were therefore marked down as someone with suspect loyalties. For the many Jews smeared in this way, there were unmistakable echoes of past surges in antisemitism, with the fixation on murky Jewish imperatives overriding national security concerns. But it was problematic in other ways as well.

For one thing, the term insinuated that the United States had one set of interests and Israel a completely different set, turning two close allies into adversaries. It also suggested that Israel was a rogue state that was quite happy to use Diaspora Jewish communities as a fifth column when necessary. Through a combination of financial incentives, subtle intimidation and promises of political advancement, the “Israel-Firsters” were supposedly able to ensure that American politicians put Israel’s agenda before that of their own country, thereby ensuring distrust and dislike of the United States across the Muslim world at the same time as billions of American taxpayer dollars flowed in support of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians.

People who support Israel, and choose to make donations to candidates who think similarly, are not engaged in something sinister. Israel is not Iran, China, or Russia, not Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Muslim Brotherhood. It is an advanced democracy, part of — a very important part — of the civilization of the West. Israel has consistently been our loyal ally, sharing its intelligence on terrorism with the American government (including the help it provided in locating the ISIS head now hoist by his own petard), collaborating with the Pentagon on cyber warfare since Stuxnet, and shares its own military advances (Iron Dome, laser anti-missile and anti-drone weapons) with the Americans. Neither Great Britain, nor Germany, nor France is currently as valuable a military ally to us as is Israel.

This caricature of advocacy for Israel in America has been offset by the carefully manicured self-image of Palestinian advocates as speaking truth to power and campaigning for their cause through the power of popular persuasion, rather than dubious congressional lobbying. If Israel is an establishment cause, the logic goes, then Palestine must be the primary mission of a progressive coalition that understands Zionism as a political toxin, alongside racism and Islamophobia. And whereas advocacy for Israel takes place in the corridors of power, Palestine manifests itself in street demonstrations and campus rallies, in mass petitions, and, above all, in the campaign to subject Israel to a regime of boycotts, divestment and sanctions as seen in the BDS movement.

The pro-Palestinian militants present themselves as the voice of the” people” — the real people, who march and protest and shout down anyone who disagrees, not those politicians who continue to support the Zionist state.

These “people” can be divided into two groups.

First, there are the battalions of the ill-informed, often young, people who can be inveigled into believing the worst about Israel because they know nothing about its history, or about the attempts of the Arabs to destroy it. The’ve never heard of the Mandate for Palestine, the Treaty of San Remo, Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, UNSC Resolution 242. Instead, they have been fed a highly imaginative version of the Arab-Israeli conflict that the ghost of Sheherezade could not have bettered. They have heard repeated endlessly, too, the charge that Israel is an “apartheid” state; they do not bother to consider all the evidence to the contrary that keeps being offered – the Arabs who sit in the Knesset, serve on the Supreme Court, go abroad as part of the diplomatic corps, and so on — but parrot mindlessly that sinister epithet with deep conviction.

Second, there are the antisemites, who find an acceptable outlet for their hate in working for the disappearance, by degrees, of the only Jewish state. The ignorant and the hate-filled are the “people” whose views we are expected to trust, while we are called upon to dismiss the views of those “politicians” who are apparently the only ones who are pro-Israel, and that is only because Jewish PACs provide campaign contributions. Ilhan Omar was surely onto something when she said it’s “all about the benjamins.”

But that self-image has taken a harsh blow during the last fortnight with a new political scandal involving Rep. Marie Newman, a left-wing Democrat from Illinois who is a die-hard opponent of Israel. Newman is currently being investigated by the House Ethics Committee after a report published at the end of January by the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) concluded that there was “substantial reason to believe” that she had violated federal law by promising employment to a political rival as a part of a quid pro quo.

Newman’s rival — a Palestinian-American academic named Iymen Chehade — was allegedly promised a job as her foreign-policy adviser on a six-figure salary in exchange for not running against her in the 2020 congressional race. A 2018 email unearthed by the OCE included an agreement that Chehade was “not to announce or submit his candidacy for election to Congressional Representative of the 3rd District of Illinois” and that “in exchange, Newman will hire Chehade as her Chief Foreign Policy Advisor.” But after she won the election, Newman allegedly reneged on their agreement. Chehade sued in response before the pair reached an undisclosed out-of-court settlement.

Now this bribery scandal, involving Marie Newman, Iymen Chehade, and — the elephant in the room — federal money, surely deserves entry in the annals of Congressional crime and rascality. Marie Newman apparently tried to bribe a potential rival not to run; the quid pro quo being her offer of a well-paid job (“six figures”) as her foreign policy advisor. The money for his salary, then, would have been coming not from Marie Newman herself. It was to be government money. That makes the tale even more……piquant.

Further investigations, however, have revealed a startling additional layer to Newman’s discussions with Chehade concerning her positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to the Daily Beast last week, “a cozy job and big title weren’t the only things Newman negotiated.”

Chehade reportedly secured Newman’s agreement to control her positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict entirely. Arguably, that wasn’t such a big ask, given that Newman had sponsored multiple bills in favor of a Palestinian state and, last September, was one of only eight Democratic legislators to vote against a bill authorizing $1 billion for Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system. Moreover, a visit to her website reveals just one topic under the issues tab: “Israel-Palestine.”

Nonetheless, according to the communications discovered by the Daily Beast, Chehade clearly wasn’t leaving anything to chance, demanding Newman’s agreement on a range of policy issues. This would mean opposing all legislation involving military aid to Israel, supporting legislation on Palestinian statehood and traveling to the region on “fact-finding” missions whose itinerary would be entirely set by Chehade….

Chehade didn’t just want the high-paying job. He also wanted to be Marie Newman’s puppet-master, dictating to her the position she would have to take on all issues involving Israel and “Palestine.” In “fact-finding” missions to Israel and the West Bank, that Newman might arrange for her colleagues, she would have to agree to follow an itinerary that Chehade would set. It’s not hard to imagine how he would do it.

I’m guessing that Chehade’s itinerary for the visiting congressional delegation would include visits to the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, to see Palestinians, gathered for the express purpose of tearfully describing how terrible the Israelis have been, threatening, for no apparent reason, “eviction” from land “we have owned for hundreds of years.” There would also be visits to Palestinian villages and cities where the visitors could see the remains of houses that the IDF had demolished. The families would be alerted to on hand to bewail the loss of their dwellings; of course, there would be no mention of why the demolitions took place, A visit to the Negev, to listen to complaints from the Bedouin. Possibly included would be a visit to a Palestinian school to see the neat rows of uniformed children, so sweetly inoffensive – the visitors are most impressed — but not a word will be said about the antisemitic passages in their schoolbooks. Definitely no meetings would be held with the Israeli and Palestinian Arabs who support the Jewish state — such people as Youssef Haddad and the journalists Khaled Abu Toameh.

The Israelis would also be on Chehade’s – and therefore Marie Newman’s – itinerary. But which Israelis? Not any of the articulate and lucid defenders of the Jewish state. No, that would never do. No visits to the Golan, to see how vital it is for Israel’s security. The Congressional delegation would likely meet with the pro-Palestinian “Israeli civil rights groups,” including B’Tselem, as well as with Israelis linked to such anti-Israel groups as the Jewish American If Not Now and Jewish Voice For Peace. And the unwary Congressmen would come away none the wiser that their visit had been crafted so that they could witness a display of Palestinian anguish (“evictions” at Sheikh Jarrah, a “demolition” in Jenin) and present anti-Zionist Jews as the true voice of Israel.

Marie Newman was ready to pay Chehade off with government money (his ample salary) and to let him dictate her votes and views on Israel and “Palestine.” When he presented his demand that any congressional trip she arranged to the Middle East would have nothing to do either with the Israeli government or with any pro-Zionist organization, she did not blanch at the outrageousness of any of this; her only quibble was about “mostly phraseology.”

Newman has dismissed the investigation into her professional relationship with Chehade as a “partisan witch hunt.” She is also poised to lose her congressional seat following redistricting in Illinois, which means that she will have to face off later this year against a legislator from her own party, Rep. Sean Casten. It shouldn’t come as shock, therefore, if the progressive “Squad” of House Democrats loses at least one member in 2022….

How could the investigation by the House Ethics Committee be a “partisan witch hunt” when her fellow Democrats make up six of its eleven members? It’s not a “witch hunt” when you have in hand incriminating emails, and the testimony of Mr. Chehade himself, who, after Marie Newman reneged on her promise to give him a job as her chief foreign policy advisor, decided to sue her, thus revealing the “arrangement.” He came to an out-of-court settlement with Newman. Congress needs to know, and the voters in Chicago need to know, how much money Chehade was paid and whether Marie Newman used government funds to pay off Chehade.

Marie Newman will have a hard time explaining, or explaining away, her promise to pay her potential rival Mr. Chehade, not to run against her by offering him a well-paid job on her staff, which means she has made dubious, and almost certainly illegal, use of federal funds. And she will also have to answer for the payment she made to settle Chehade’s lawsuit against her when she reneged on her promise to hire him.. It’s most unlikely she’ll be re-elected. But don’t cry for her. There’s a job waiting for her back in Chicago, helping CAIR with its community outreach. She’ll do just fine. Boss Tweed would have been proud of Marie Newman.