Rabbis call on Pelosi to remove Omar from key committee

Letter signed by 200 rabbis urges House speaker to oust Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs committee.

By World Israel News Staff

More than 200 rabbis signed a letter calling on House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to remove firebrand Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from her seat on the influential House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The letter, seen by Fox News, says Omar’s rhetoric against Israel incites anti-Semitic attacks on American Jews.

The Somalia-born immigrant who was elected to the House of Representatives in 2019 was denounced by American Jews and fellow Democrats for equating the Israeli and U.S. militaries with Hamas and the Taliban on Twitter. She then dismissed the fallout as “Islamophobia.”

Pelosi took no action against Omar.

The letter was sent by the Coalition of Jewish Values, which previously condemned statements by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). In February, Republicans booted Greene from the House Education and Budget committees for blaming California wildfires on “Jewish space lasers.” New York Rabbi Pesach Lerner is president of the coalition.

The coalition’s letter said, “Rep. Omar’s unfounded assertion that Israel committed ‘unthinkable atrocities’ by defending lives against an openly genocidal terror organization is not merely offensive, it is pernicious—for it is grounded in the blood libel and the calumny that Jews poisoned wells during the Black Death. Throughout the generations, rivers of blood have been shed by mobs motivated by the incendiary myth of the murderous Jew.”

The rabbis further insisted that Pelosi’s blind eye to Omar’s calumnies helps create an environment where anti-Semitism is allowed to flourish in the U.S. for the sake of “identity politics.”

“Without anything resembling a forceful response from the Democratic Party, tolerance of anti-Jewish hatred has proliferated,” the letter said. “When 12 Jewish Democrats in the House rightfully denounced Rep. Omar’s abhorrent bigotry, the Congressional Progressive Caucus stooped to playing identity politics, cravenly insinuating that the motivation for the condemnation was opposition to Rep. Omar as a ‘Black, Muslim woman’ rather than her anti-Semitic animus.”

The letter insisted that “Jews are being attacked day and night on American streets by mobs incited by Rep. Omar’s rhetoric. Yet the Congressional Progressive Caucus claims that it is Rep. Omar who is facing ‘threats.’ We are appalled.”

“To protect Jewish Americans and, moreover, safeguard the integrity of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, we thus insist upon the removal of Rep. Omar from her appointment,’ the rabbis’ letter concluded.