Twelve pro-Israel groups delivered a letter on Monday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), urging for the removal of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the committee amid the Minnesota congresswoman’s latest anti-Semitic remarks.
“Speaker Pelosi, you demonstrated wisdom and leadership in rebuking Rep. Omar on February 11 following her use of anti-Semitic stereotypes, and Chairman Engel, your reaction to the classic anti-Semitic trope of the charge of ‘dual loyalty’ about American Jews, that Rep. Omar uttered this weekend at a Washington establishment, was highly appropriate, and we applaud you both for that,” they said.
“We hope you will continue to demonstrate your commitment to the high moral standards of your office by removing Rep. Omar, a woman who has repeatedly exhibited strong biases against the State of Israel and the Jewish people, from this critically important and sensitive committee,” the continued.
The groups also sounded the alarm ahead of Omar’s scheduled appearance at Islamic Relief USA, “whose parent organization and chapters have documented ties to terrorist organizations.”
The organizations said her upcoming keynote speaker gig “demonstrates that she has learned next to nothing over the last few weeks when she was reprimanded by [Pelosi and Engel’s] office and by other Democrats for posting ugly, anti-Semitic attacks on Jews and their organizations.”
The groups included the Endowment for Middle East Truth, ACT for America, Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi), Americans for a Safe Israel, Americans for Peace and Tolerance, Center for Security Policy, Coalition for Jewish Values, Committee for Israel, The Jewish Policy Center, National Council of Young Israel, Zachor Legal Institute and Jexodus, the Millennial Pro-Israel Movement.
In a separate appeal, the Republican Jewish Coalition called on Pelosi to remove Omar from the committee: “Anti-Semitic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar must be stripped of her membership on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is the only person that can do this, and it is her responsibility to do this as the head of Omar’s party.”
In a separate letter to Pelosi, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt requested a congressional resolution condemning anti-Semitic sentiment.
“Rep. Omar has argued that these statements reflect good faith disagreements about U.S. policy toward Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the relationship between the two,” he said. “This could not be further from the truth.”
“Accusing Jews of having allegiance to a foreign government has long been a vile anti-Semitic slur that has been used to harass, marginalize and persecute the Jewish people for centuries,” he continued. “Sometimes referred to as the ‘dual-loyalty’ charge, it alleges that Jews should be suspected of being disloyal neighbors or citizens because their true allegiance is to their co-religionists around the world or to a secret and immoral Jewish agenda.”
“This anti-Semitic allegation posits that non-Jews should not trust the motives or actions of their Jewish neighbors, who may be engaged in deceitful behavior to accomplish their own goals at the expense of others,” he added.
