Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has appointed Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to serve on the influential House Foreign Affairs Committee that oversees U.S. foreign policy and foreign aid, despite Omar’s history of anti-Israel rhetoric and her support for the anti-Semitic boycott movement, JNS reported Friday.
Omar’s tweets about Israel have earned her notoriety in the pro-Israel community. The Congresswoman tweeted in November 2012 that Israel had “hypnotized the world” to ignore its “evil doings,” using traditional anti-Semitic language about a nefarious Jewish cabal that controls and deceives the world.
Defending the tweet in May 2018, Omar charged that “drawing attention to the apartheid Israeli regime” was not anti-Semitic, nor equivalent to hating Jews.
In a CNN interview that aired Wednesday night, Omar doubled-down on her comments, including the tweet in which she accused Israel of hypnotizing the world: “Those unfortunate words were the only words I could think about expressing at that moment.”
She added: “What is really important to me is that people recognize that there is a difference between criticizing a military action by a government that has exercised really oppressive policies and being offensive or attacking to particular people of faith.”
Josh Block, CEO and President of The Israel Project, tweeted Thursday that Omar’s selection was “A deeply disturbing choice by the Dem leadership.” He asked: “What message does this send? Make anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic remarks, get seat on Foreign Affairs. Moral abdication.”
Since Omar was elected to Minnesota’s House of Representatives in 2016, she has used her position to advance anti-Israel policies, including voting against an anti-BDS bill to stop financially punishing Israel. Omar, a refugee from Somalia, won the seat previously held by Keith Ellison in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District and is one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress.
During her campaign, she changed her views on the anti-Semitic boycott campaign that advocates for the destruction of the Jewish State several times, depending on the audience she addressed.
When a Jewish journalist inquired about her seemingly contradicting views on the boycott movement, Omar insisted she hadn’t changed her views on BDS: “I believe and support the BDS movement and have fought to make sure people’s right to support it isn’t criminalized,” Omar said. “I do, however, have reservations on [the] effectiveness of the movement in accomplishing a lasting solution.”
Omar’s selection to the House Foreign Affairs Committee comes days after the Democratic National Committee severed ties with the Women’s March over concerns of anti-Semitism within the leadership ranks.
[Photo: CNN / YouTube ]