Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has been in Congress two months. Despite the brevity of her career, the House is already taking its second vote to condemn her anti-Semitic conduct without actually mentioning her name.
Omar’s hateful and false insinuations about secret and powerful Jewish conspiracies, spread to the wrong quarters, are just the sort that lead to hate crimes and synagogue massacres, a fact to which the congressional resolution clearly alludes.
It is mildly heartening to see the House, despite being controlled by Omar’s party, issue a retort to her vile prejudices, but the retort is painfully weak. And it is not at all encouraging to see that Omar, unlike Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, has faced no consequences for her bigotry, despite causing so much trouble in Congress already.
The Democratic Party’s leadership appears to be scared that a clear, unambiguous repudiation of the most outspoken anti-Semite in their midst would offend certain constituencies in its ranks — Muslims, black women, campus anti-Israel BDS supporters — whose votes the party wants. The plague of political correctness has thus become a powerful force bolstering anti-Semitism.
Omar’s anti-Semitism is incontrovertible. She has repeatedly and publicly accused American Jews of having dual loyalties, a classic anti-Semitic trope that goes at least as far back as the Persian Empire. She has also insinuated, employing pretty much every known anti-Semitic trope in one fell swoop, that a cabal of wealthy Jews has secretly bought the U.S. Congress’ support of Israel with “Benjamins.”
That sparked a sufficient uproar for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to condemn the remarks and strong-arm Omar into what was claimed to be an “unequivocal” apology. But just a few weeks later, a reporter spotted Omar at a public event, responding with a furtive smile when an attendee repeated her “Benjamins” remark back to her.
In the time since Omar’s forced apologies for her original outbursts, she has both said explicitly and shown through her conduct that she is not at all sorry for her rhetoric and conspiracy theories. As she put it, she only “apologized for the way that my words made people feel,” not for their bigoted content.
The truth is that she is not ashamed of her anti-Semitism. She wears it as a badge of honor. Her antipathy toward Jews, like that of many on the Left, has its roots partly in the Cold War tribalism of those who sided with Russia and Arab nations against America and Israel and partly in the virulent and noxious anti-Semitism that is a stain on so much of the Muslim world.
There should be no partisanship on this issue. People who disagree on politics should agree that the scapegoating of Jews for society’s problems is unacceptable and leads to violence.
Omar’s fellow Democrats, especially her party leaders, need to stop rewarding her crocodile tears by posing with her on the cover of Rolling Stone and letting her keep her plum committee assignment on Foreign Affairs. Omar is what she is: an embarrassment to her district and to her party. She is an ideologically hardened Jew hater. Every politician hoping to have a future should feel the need to keep a distance from her.
Instead of bringing another milquetoast resolution against anti-Semitism, Pelosi should be directing the House Ethics Committee to look into a censure or other more serious rebuke to make an example of Congress’ worst anti-Semite.
