Ilhan Omar Slammed After Claiming She Was Unaware of Anti-Semitic Stereotypes Regarding “Jews and Money”

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State of the Union
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was taking part in an interview on Sunday with CNN’s “State of the Union” when she made the assertion that controversial comments she has made about Jews in the past were not anti-Semitic because she wasn’t aware that they were offensive. Image credit: CNN / Twitter.

WASHINGTON, D.C. –  Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), one of the first Muslims ever elected to Congress and who has been repeatedly accused of anti-Semitism in the past, was roundly slammed as a lair in a recent interview by claiming that she was “unaware” that some of the tropes she had been spreading – including those regarding “Jews and money” – were, in fact, based on harmful and racist stereotypes. 

Omar – recently removed from her post on the House Foreign Affairs Committee by new GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy – was taking part in an interview on Sunday with CNN’s “State of the Union” when she made the assertion that controversial comments she has made about Jews in the past were not anti-Semitic because she wasn’t aware that they were offensive. 

“I certainly did not or was not aware that the word ‘hypnotized’ was a trope. I wasn’t aware of the fact that there are tropes about Jews and money. That has been very enlightening part of this journey,” she said. “To insinuate that I knowingly said these things when people have read into my comments to make it sound as if I have something against the Jewish community is so wrong.” 

In the past, Omar – a Somali-American – has compared Israel to terrorist organizations such as Hamas and the Taliban, and claimed that the Jewish state is only allied with the United States because it’s “all about the Benjamins.” 

Omar’s insistence that she was completely unaware that such comments were widely considered racist tropes was roundly criticized on Twitter, with former American Jewish Committee spokesperson and PR director Avi Mayer saying that anti-Semitism was the Congresswoman’s trademark. 

“Ilhan Omar employed one antisemitic trope in 2012, after which she said learned all about antisemitism ‘from Jewish orgs. She then employed another one in 2019,” Mayer tweeted. “But she didn’t know there are tropes about Jews and money?” 

The special communications advisor for Senator Ted Cruz called out Omar, essentially calling her a blatant liar. 

“Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar claims on CNN that she was ‘not aware that the word “hypnotized” was a trope’ and ’wasn’t aware of the fact that there are tropes about Jews and money.’” he tweeted. “Give me a break. That’s BS.”  

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