Freshman Rep. Max Rose has apologized to his Jewish constituents during a town hall meeting for Rep. Ilhan Omar’s recent anti-Semitic statements.
“As a young congressman, I’ve got to tell you I’m sorry,” the House Democrat from New York told the crowd assembled by the Council of Jewish Organizations of Staten Island on Tuesday night, the Jewish Insider reported.
“You sent me to Congress to take responsibility. You sent me to Congress to have your back … and I failed you. Because I know that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s comments really caused you all a lot of pain by bringing up anti-Semitic tropes.”
Rose cited his military service to hit back at the freshman congresswoman from Minnesota, who sparked a firestorm in February for using anti-Jewish rhetoric, saying that support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins” and accusing Jewish-American legislators of “dual loyalty.”
“Certainly as a Jewish combat veteran, I could tell you I don’t have dual allegiance,” said Rose, a first lieutenant platoon leader in Afghanistan. “I have allegiance to the flag. I have allegiance to the United States of America.”
At the same time, he defended the Democratic leadership’s handling of the controversy and its decision to not seek Omar’s removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Removing a member from a committee would be an “escalating” situation, Rose said.
“We have got to show her that there is a pathway for her to do the right thing, and we have to be vigilant towards that,” he said. “Believe me, she understands that that’s a possibility and nobody is taking that off the table, but we are not there yet.”
He continued: “Let me be very honest with you, I was horrified and sad when she made the comments. So horrified that as a freshman member of Congress, I stepped in front of my party’s leadership and I was the first member of the Democratic Party to criticize her.
“I did say that I accepted her apology. You know why I did that? Because I am an adult. Because my goal was to continue the quiet and non-glamorous actions of coalition-building and trying to protect the people in this room from those comments being made,” he said.
Omar, a Somali-born Muslim who spent years in a Kenyan refugee camp after her family escaped violence in their homeland, made the anti-Semitic comments at an event in Washington, DC, last month, saying she wanted “to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.
“I want to ask, why is it okay for me to talk about the influence of the [National Rifle Association], of fossil-fuel industries, or Big Pharma, and not talk about a powerful lobby that is influencing policy?”
On Tuesday, Rose said he was “not satisfied” with what he’s seen so far from Omar.
“To equate Jewish organizations with the NRA, of course, I’m upset. Of course, I’m not satisfied and I don’t know any who are either. That’s why the first thing that I said is that ‘I’m sorry,’ I’m sorry because I couldn’t protect you from this. And that takes a lot to say.”
The House responded to Omar’s controversial remarks by overwhelmingly passing a resolution rebuking bigotry in all its forms, with only 23 conservative Republicans opposing it, that did not mention her by name.
An earlier version of the resolution focused on addressing only anti-Semitism.