The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has condemned Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–MN) for agreeing to be keynote speaker at a fundraiser for the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR). 

CAIR is a Saudi-funded, radical Islamic organization whose founder is on record praising suicide bombers and saying he would like the Quran to be the highest authority in America, and whose personnel have been implicated in crimes consistent with these positions. It has apologized for Osama Bin Laden, employed three persons subsequently arrested on terrorism-related charges and declared its intent to make Islam dominant in America and the Quran the highest authority in the land, over the U.S. Constitution. 

The U.S. Department of Justice listed CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in funding millions of dollars to the terrorist organization Hamas. Additionally, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) named CAIR a terrorist organization along with al-Qaeda and ISIS in 2014. Further, FBI investigators uncovered evidence establishing CAIR’s place in the ‘Palestine Committee,’ which was a Muslim Brotherhood-created network aimed at helping Hamas in the United States, according to a report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism. In 2009, US District Court Judge Jorge Solis ruled that there is “at least a prima facie case as to CAIR’s involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas” (Ilanit Chernick, ‘Ilhan Omar to speak at banquet for group known for terrorist group support,’ Jerusalem Post, February 19, 2019).

Rep. Omar is scheduled to address CAIR’s 4th Annual Valley Banquet on March 23, in an event entitled, ‘Advancing Justice, empowering Valley Muslims.’ Hassan Shibly, the Chief Executive Director for CAIR-Florida, who has explicitly stated that Hamas and Hezbollah are not terrorist organizations, will also be speaking at the event (‘Ihlan Omar to fundraise for Hamas-linked Muslim organization,’ Daily Caller, February 17, 2019). In 2014, Shibly claimed that the Hamas terror tunnels uncovered in Operation Protective Edge in the northern Gaza Strip were “being used in the defense of Palestine.”

Hamas is a US- and European Union-recognized terrorist organization which calls in its Covenant for the destruction of Israel, the global murder of Jews and cites approvingly from the notorious late nineteenth century anti-Semitic forgery, ‘The Protocols of the Elders’ of Zion.’

Hizballah has conducted hundreds of terror attacks against Israel since the 1980s, was responsible for the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, which left 305 people dead, including 241 American servicemen, and sparked the 2006 Lebanon War. It also aiding the perpetrators of the 1992 suicide bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina which killed 29, and is widely suspected of carrying out the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 85. It has also funneled weapons to Muslim militias in the Balkans during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and killed six people, including five Israelis, in a bombing attack in Bulgaria in 2012.

Rep. Ihlan Omar’s record:

• Issued an anti-Semitic tweet in 2012 saying, “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” Rep. Omar defended her attack before appearing to apologize in a tweet, but only for her having “unknowingly used” a bad choice of words, which she purportedly only now understood amounted to “an anti-semitic[sic] trope … which is unfortunate and offensive.” Yesterday, Rep. Omar candidly stated that she had not apologized for her tweet being anti-Semitic, either wittingly or unwittingly, merely for “for the way that my words made people feel.”

• She issued no substantive apology for viciously attacking Israel for legitimately defending its citizens from rocket assaults, and did not withdraw or apologize for any of her previous positions defaming Israel as an apartheid state.

• Once elected in last year’s midterm elections, she confirmed to the website Muslim Girl that she supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which, as openly admitted by its originators, seeks to delegitimize, economically harm and ultimately eliminate the Jewish State of Israel by criminalizing business relations with Israeli Jews. Here, Representative Omar is guilty of a bait-and-switch since, when asked the previous August during a primary debate at a synagogue to specify “exactly where you stand” on BDS, Omar then said that BDS was “not helpful in getting that two-state solution” without, however, telling anyone that she nonetheless supports it.

• In a May 2018 tweet, Representative Omar labelled Israel an “apartheid Israeli regime,” a statement that, on a purely intellectual level, is either knowingly false or astoundingly ignorant for her accusing the only democratic nation in the Middle East, which grants more liberal rights to its Muslim citizens than any Arab nation, of being an evil, racially discriminatory regime.

• On February 10, 2019, she claimed that Republicans’ support for Israel is bought by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). These anti-Semitic comments received swift condemnation from congressional members on both sides of the aisle, including the Democratic leadership and the White House.

Rep. Omar’s words and deeds are clearly anti-Semitic as defined in the US State Department definition of anti- Semitism as determined in its May 2016 document, ‘Defining anti-Semitism,’ particularly with regard to viewing the Jews as “conspiring to harm humanity,” and feeding “the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.” Also, in her gutter criticism of Israel as an “apartheid regime,” she is clearly guilty of what the State Department definition of anti-Semitism describes as “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.” Moreover, in viciously defaming legitimate Israeli defense of its citizens from Hamas rocket barrages, she is also guilty of “applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” She also referred to Israel as a “regime,” a term reserved for totalitarian, fascist or terrorist countries.

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “We utterly condemn Rep. Omar for agreeing to keynote at a CAIR event. 

“CAIR’s record of pro-terrorism, radical Islamic extremism, up to and including the arrest and imprisonment of senior personnel on terrorism-related charges, simply and starkly underscores the fact that Rep. Omar is a supporter of radical Islamic extremism, as her anti-Semitic words and deeds already showed us even before she was elected to Congress.

“The fight against anti-Semitism and racism cannot be won if we indulge, ignore and finesse the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel extremism that Rep. Omar personifies.

“Scarcely a week has passed since her election in which she has not added to her record some new outrageous statement or deed indicating her support for Israel’s destruction and a partiality for Israel’s terrorist enemies.

“Rep. Omar’s conduct clearly exemplifies the anti-Semitic activities elaborated in the US State Department’s Definition of Anti-Semitism.

She should be compelled to resign from the House Foreign Relations Committee and indeed from Congress.”