Ilhan Omar claims Jewish lobby buys off American politicians.

The best rebuttal to Ilhan Omar's claims is that the Zionism lobby is a reflection of, and not responsible for, the deep devotion and favouritism of the American people and political system toward the Israeli government.

If AIPAC disappeared tomorrow would US policy toward Israel change? Of course not. Some other group would congeal to represent the interests of tens of millions of Americans and millions of Israelis who support the pernicious relationship between those two governments.

As a gun guy, it's very similar to the hand-wringing about the NRA. But the power of the NRA is not rooted in how much money it has, it's rooted in the fact that it can plausibly claim to speak for tens of millions of people who will look to it for political guidance. Not because it "bought" them but because they support its mission.

There are two problems with this:

i) There arises somewhat of a chicken-egg problem. America's devotion to the Israeli state, especially from the white evangelicals who make up the broadest base of support for the IDF, didn't occur in a vacuum. It happened with intense lobbying and outreach efforts by Zionists to convince these people that the modern Israeli ethno-state and the Biblical Kingdom of Israel are one and the same.

It was a brilliant bit of propaganda, and it has paid off for the Zionists in the form of tens of billions of dollars in American taxpayer welfare toward the IDF and a permanent veto against any international effort to hold the Israeli state accountable for any horrid thing it does.

So while AIPAC itself may represent these people's beliefs, it doesn't make much sense to ignore the symbiotic role the Zionism lobby plays in creating, nurturing, and reinforcing those beliefs in the first place.

ii) This rebuttal doesn't require a finding that Rep. Omar is a bigot, and smearing her as a bigot is literally the only goal of her critics on this question because it's the only way the Israeli ethno-state can rhetorically defend itself anymore.