No one loses a debate over anti-Semitism. Except Jews.

Please stop with the predictions that the Jewish vote in 2020 is suddenly up for grabs. Democrats may have thrown Jews who were offended by Omar under the bus, but they’ll file provisional ballots while looking up at the rear axle if they have to. And Republicans who think they don’t play a role in that are fooling themselves. “We finally censured Steve King after he won his ninth term” isn’t the bumper sticker of a party that’s done everything in its power to reach Jewish voters — especially when it’s still led by a president who infamously equivocated on racist, anti-Semitic marchers in Charlottesville…

And in the context of this partisan divide, questioning others’ standing to complain about bigotry is the order of the day. Even many denunciations of Omar include the requisite throat-clearing about the “bad faith” of Republicans leveling the accusations. Republicans do this, too — Barack Obama’s former ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, is a regular target of unfair right-wing attacks along these lines. Americans would be wise to remember that a circle has no exit. The past sins of both major parties will have us mired in endless finger-pointing if we let it.

Here, too, a warning from Britain. As the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland wrote in 2018: “It’s wrong to suggest [British Jews’] true purpose is thwarting the Corbyn project, as if the Jews who demonstrated in Westminster on Monday are pretending to be outraged by anti-Jewish racism when their real motive is stopping the renationalisation of the railways.” Moreover, “what lies beneath such a view is a notion that is itself antisemitic: that Jews do not act sincerely, but always with an ulterior motive or hidden agenda.”