Leadership Quote by Jan Schakowsky

A sitting U.S. lawmaker naming “blatantly anti-Semitic remarks” isn’t just a moral condemnation; it’s a strategic act of boundary-setting. Schakowsky’s line does two things at once: it reports an Iraqi official’s scapegoating, and it signals to an American audience that the violence in Iraq is being narrated inside Iraq through conspiratorial, ethnically targeted blame. That matters because it undercuts the tidy policy story Washington preferred at the time: that sectarian conflict could be managed mainly through elections, training, and institution-building. If political leaders are legitimizing hate narratives at the top, the problem isn’t only security capacity; it’s the ideology being mainstreamed.

The phrasing is careful and political. By quoting the claim (“the Jews and sons of Jews are the problem”) rather than paraphrasing it, she forces listeners to confront the ugliness directly, while insulating herself from charges of exaggeration. Calling it “blatantly” anti-Semitic is also a preemptive move: it shuts down the familiar dodge that such statements are “misunderstood” critiques of Israel or Western policy.

Subtext: this is a warning about the fragility of democratic optics. A parliament can exist and still incubate classic scapegoating, turning minority demonization into an all-purpose explanation for chaos. For U.S. politics, it’s also about accountability: if America is investing blood and money in a new Iraqi political order, then the character of that order - not just its procedural legitimacy - becomes a U.S. concern.