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Seems a bit too cute to use a previous defense of someone to add weight to your current criticism of her when the prior defense was private and the criticism is public.
FWIW, I also mostly disagree with Chait on the merits of his criticism, having watched the clip in question.
Omar says here that feeling a bond as an American Jew with the people of Israel is legitimate and understandable, and in fact she analogizes it directly to her own children's sense of connection with Somalia.
She goes on to say, though, that a concern for the suffering of Jews in Israel—which again, she doesn't deny the legitimacy of—has to be joined with a concern for the suffering of Palestinians.
When she talks about "allegiance," she specifically, explicitly frames it as a statement about pro-Israel lobbyists, not about American Jews at the grassroots.
There are moments in the speech where she uses phrasing that I wouldn't, but to suggest that she's saying that grassroots concern on the part American Jews for the Jews of Israel is a matter of improper dual allegiance is false. She comes far closer to saying the opposite.
Just gonna say a little more here about "there are moments in the speech where she uses phrasing that I wouldn't," since it bugs me when other people soft-pedal their criticisms of people they're qualifiedly defending.
There's no nod in the clip above to American Jewish activism around Palestinian rights, and I think that's an unfortunate omission. Jewishness leads many American Jews to be more sensitive to Palestinian rights than they would otherwise be, not less, and that's important to say.
The complexity of American Jewish opinion on the state of Israel and Palestinian rights is missing from Omar's comments. I don't think there was malign intent in that flattening, but the flattening is there.
To put it another way, even a supportive reference to the feelings of American Jews about Israel is going to reinforce stereotypes if its framing oversimplifies what those feelings are.
As I say above, though, to my ear this was generally a thoughtful and sympathetic statement.
