Left-wing US Jewish groups deny Omar is anti-Israel, antisemitic

They slammed Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s promise to boot the Minnesotan Democrat from the House Foreign Relations Committee.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Eight liberal American Jewish organizations defended a notorious antisemitic congresswoman Monday and demanded that the presumptive Republican House leader walk back his promise to remove her from an influential committee.

“As Jewish American organizations, we oppose Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s pledge to strip Representative Ilhan Omar of her House Foreign Affairs Committee seat based on false accusations that she is antisemitic or anti-Israel,” said the statement by the groups, most prominently among them J Street, New Israel Fund, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and Americans for Peace Now.

“We may not agree with some of Congresswoman Omar’s opinions, but we categorically reject the suggestion that any of her policy positions or statements merit disqualification from her role on the committee,” the statement continued.

The groups then went on the offensive, decrying “a surge in dangerous right-wing antisemitism” in the country without acknowledging Jew hatred coming from the Left. They also charged that McCarthy himself was guilty of “the rampant promotion of antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories.”

The only support they brought for this statement was a tweet that the California Representative had once “posted (and later deleted)” that “George Soros and two other billionaires of Jewish descent were seeking to ‘buy’ an election.”

Soros is a prominent Jewish businessman and fierce critic of Israel who financially backs J Street and a host of other leftist organizations.

Omar is a prominent member of the so-called Squad of progressive Democrats. Despite the defense of the leftist groups, she is infamous in Jewish circles for making comments that were one-sidedly critical of Israel or invoked classic anti-Jewish tropes. These include implying that the pro-Israel AIPAC lobbying group buys Congressional votes, listing Israel along with the United States, Hamas, and the Taliban as those who “commit unthinkable atrocities,” and submitting a resolution in favor of boycotting Israel, comparing it to a boycott on Nazis.

She has walked back some of her statements, but not all, and after the Republicans regained a slim majority in the House in November, McCarthy said that her antisemitism disqualified her from the Foreign Affairs Committee.

In contrast, the statement accused McCarthy of being “clearly motivated by partisanship, not principle” when making his promise regarding Omar, as well as one to boot two Democratic congressmen from his own state, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, from the Intelligence Committee.

McCarthy has accused Schiff of lying to the public in negative statements against former president Donald Trump and positive support for President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who allegedly has had questionable ties to oligarchs in Ukraine.

Swalwell was unknowingly assisted politically for several years by a Chinese spy, who was looking for classified information he was privy to. Although the FBI cleared him of any wrongdoing, McCarthy said he shouldn’t be in a position to know American secrets.

AntisemitismHouse Foreign Affairs CommitteeIlhan OmarJ StreetKevin McCarthy