The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has applauded President Donald Trump’s call for Rep. Ihlan Omar (D–MN) to resign over anti-Semitic tweets. Rep. Omar, a freshman legislator voted into office in the 2018 midterm elections, has an astonishing and disturbing record of anti-Semitic and extreme anti-Israel words and deeds.
When running for Congress, Rep. Omar misled her constituents regarding her support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign which, as admitted by its originators, seeks to delegitimize, economically harm and ultimately eliminate the Jewish State of Israel by criminalizing business relations with Israeli Jews. Once elected, Rep. Omar admitted to her support for BDS.
In a November 2012 tweet, Rep. Omar made a statement invoking time-honored anti-Semitic images of enormous and malign Jewish power, tweeting, “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and see the evil doings of Israel.” Rep. Omar purports to have apologized for this tweet’s anti-Semitic trope, but she neither withdrew her criticism of Israel nor, to this day, has she deleted this tweet.
In 2017, as a Minnesota state legislator, Omar was one of only two legislators who voted against a bill aimed at denying life insurance payments to any person convicted of aiding or committing terror acts. And in a May 2018 tweet, she labelled Israel an “apartheid … regime.”
Despite this vicious record, Rep. Omar, who has no previous experience of foreign affairs, was appointed to the House Foreign Relations Committee.
President Trump has said, “Anti-Semitism has no place in the United States Congress … I think she should either resign from Congress or she should certainly resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.”
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “We applaud President Donald Trump’s call for Rep. Omar to resign and to be removed from the House Foreign Relations Committee, to which she was unwarrantedly appointed.
“There is no doubt that the her words cross the line into anti-Semitism as defined by the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism.
“Rep Omar’s gutter criticism of Israel as an ‘apartheid regime,’ renders her clearly guilty, in the words of the State Department definition, of ‘denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.’ Also, in viciously defaming legitimate Israeli defense of its citizens from Hamas rocket barrages, she is guilty of ‘applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.’
“We dare not tolerate anti-Semitism, especially at a time in which there has been a frightening and disturbing rise in anti-Semitic activity and hate crimes across the world, including in the United States. President Trump is right to call out an egregious case of anti-Semitism and to call for the resignation of the legislator responsible.”