One large organization which represents well over 2,000 rabbis is calling on congressional leaders to make sure that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is removed from her position in a seat of the Foreign Affairs Committee because of her extensive history when it comes to highly anti-semitic statements.
The letter was issued in the wake of a small group of Republicans, which included Reps. Nancy Mace (SC), Victoria Spartz (IN), and Ken Buck (CO), suggested that they might not stand in support of the bid from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to take her out of her seat on the committee.
The Coalition for Jewish Values authored the letter which was issued to McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), asking that the members of Congress push forward with the promise from McCarthy to remove her from the committee.
“This is not a political matter, but one of moral conscience, and a necessary step to quell the rising tide of antisemitic speech and violence now impacting Jewish communities across America,” expressed Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld, President; and Rabbi Yaakov Menken, Managing Director within the letter.
The letter also came to light after Omar made the claim during an interview on CNN this past Sunday that she has absolutely no idea that her heavily anti-Semitic statements “were trafficking in antisemitism.”
“On three separate occasions, we wrote to the previous Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, to make this same request,” stated the Rabbis. “We were ignored all three times, while antisemitic hate crimes became ever more common in this country. Upon learning of the appointment of Rep. Omar to the Foreign Affairs Committee, we wrote to express our ‘alarm, dismay and outrage,’ given that even before her election to Congress, Ms. Omar had repeatedly used antisemitic tropes.”
The rabbis claimed that they issued a warning that letting Omar continue in her role on the committee would only result in emboldened anti-Semitism all over the United States and throughout Congress.
“Less than a month later, we renewed our request after Rep. Omar showed that her bigotry was unabated,” they stated. “She employed, among others, the classic trope of Jewish disloyalty, and implied that House colleagues who supported Israel had been bought off. As she wrote, ‘it’s all about the Benjamins.’”
The group pushed further when they highlighted a number of other examples of Omar’s blatant anti-semitism by stating that it was “clear that the failure of Congress to dissociate itself from Rep. Omar’s bigotry helped create the environment of hate now evident in New York and across the country, precisely as Lord Rabbi Sacks warned.”
“We believe that to remove Rep. Omar from the Foreign Affairs committee is the only morally responsible choice for a Member of Congress who opposes racism, bigotry, and antisemitism,” the letter concluded. “We implore each and every member to demonstrate their concern for all of America’s minorities, by acting against hatred directed against those most frequently targeted.”
