Rep. Ilhan Omar Criticized Once Again for Making Blatant Anti-Semitic Remarks

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While being interviewed on CNN, Rep. Ilhan Omar  revisited a tweet she sent out earlier in June where she compared Israel and the United States with Hamas and the Taliban, two well-known Middle Eastern terrorist groups. File photo: Paris Malone, Shutterstock.com, licensed.
While being interviewed on CNN, Rep. Ilhan Omar revisited a tweet she sent out earlier in June where she compared Israel and the United States with Hamas and the Taliban, two well-known Middle Eastern terrorist groups. File photo: Paris Malone, Shutterstock.com, licensed.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – According to reports, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is once again being soundly criticized for making remarks that many are saying are blatantly anti-Semitic by doubling down on recent comments that she made comparing Israel to terrorist organizations.

While being interviewed on CNN’s “The Lead” Tuesday by host Jake Tapper, Omar revisited a tweet she sent out earlier in June where she compared Israel and the United States with Hamas and the Taliban, two well-known Middle Eastern terrorist groups. When asked about the infamous tweet – which was widely condemned, even by members of her own party – Omar stated that she did not regret it.

In addition, when Tapper inquired of Omar if she understood that her fellow Democrats – and in particular, Jews – had found her comments about Israel to be anti-Semitic, she disparagingly claimed that her Jewish colleagues have not been “partners in justice.”

“I’ve welcomed, you know, anytime my colleagues have asked to have a conversation, to learn from them, for them to learn from me,” Omar said. “I think it’s really important for these members to realize that they haven’t been partners in justice. They haven’t been, you know, equally engaging in seeking justice around the world.”

Omar continued, then seeming to claim that her fellow members of Congress that were Jewish didn’t know what it was like to be discriminated against.

“It is important for me, as someone who knows what it feels like to experience injustice in ways that many of my colleagues don’t, to be a voice in finding accountability, asking for mechanisms for justice for those who are maligned, oppressed, and who have had injustice done to them,” she said.

Omar has a history of posting anti-Semitic content on social media; in February 2019, she issued a now-deleted tweet saying that the alliance between the US and Israel is “all about the Benjamins” and in 2012 she claimed that Israel “has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”

Omar’s CNN interview drew swift condemnation from users on social media, with Avi Mayer of the American Jewish Committee tweeting, “Omar’s comments draw on classic antisemitic themes about Jewish clannishness, the notion that Jews only look out for themselves. They’re also plainly false. Jewish lawmakers have been on the front lines, fighting for human rights in America and globally.”

Journalist and author Annika H Rothstein also took Omar to task, tweeting, “So Jews should learn from [Ilhan Omar] what it’s like to experience injustice? No one can ever say Ilhan Omar didn’t show the world exactly who and what she is.”

And vice president of Parents Defending Education and cofounder of the Muslim Reform Movement, Asra Nomani, was also highly critical of Omar’s statements, tweeting, “This is what a modern day Muslim Supremacist looks like. Ilhan Omar speaks to [Jake Tapper] + rebukes Jewish Democratic colleagues for failing to be ‘partners in injustice.’ Her wound is bigger than their wound—a wound collector in the Oppression Olympics.”

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