Real Reason House Republicans kicked Ilhan Omar off the Foreign Affairs Committee – Mother Jones

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Representative Ilhan Omar leaves her office on February 2, 2023. Kevin Dietsch/Getty

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House Republicans on Thursday removed Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the Foreign Affairs Committee because she is a Black Muslim woman. Officially, that’s not the reason. But the facts speak for themselves: The deportation is the culmination of years of targeting of Omar by Donald Trump, right-wing media and Republican lawmakers who have attacked his religion, ethnicity and history in as a refugee. The majority of the GOP has an official reason to oust Omarand, and then there’s the reason they and everyone else knows is really behind that outrage.

There’s only one reason House Republicans punished Ilhan Omar https://t.co/xzpis2vYmn pic.twitter.com/ERdFLHiNBK

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) February 2, 2023

Their nominal reason is that past anti-Semitic comments make her unfit to serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee. The resolution to impeach Omar contains a list of offences. Read carefully, it reveals how the party (along with some moderate Democrats) has targeted Omar since his election in 2018, taking his remarks out of context to portray him as a right-wing boogeyman.

The first offense is a February 2019 tweet in which Omar attributed lawmakers’ support for Israel to the deep pockets of the pro-Israel lobby, evoking the anti-Semitic trope that Jews buy influence and control. This tweet caused an uproar from both sides of the aisle. Omar’s response included the words: I unequivocally apologize.

The resolution goes on to quote a comment Omar made a month later during a panel discussion: I mean the political influence in this country that says it’s okay to push for allegiance to a country foreigner. Context matters. Omar was responding to a question about how accusations of anti-Semitism are used to shut down debate about Israel’s policy towards Palestine, especially when targeted at Muslims like her. But Omar’s use of the word allegiance touched on the trope of disloyal Jews and drew bipartisan criticism.

The other accusations against Omar are baseless. We take a single line from a speech she gave out of context about 9/11 to claim that she downplayed the terrorist attack. The right-wing media made a big deal of it at the time, portraying Omar as an opportunistic anti-American smear rather than an honest take on his speech. The resolution also cites Omar’s assertion that Israel is an apartheid state as proof of its anti-Semitism. Whether to apply the term apartheid to Israel is debatable, but it is not necessarily anti-Semitic to do so, as Human Rights Watch and the Israeli rights group BTselem have done. .

The resolution then accuses Omar of equating[ing] the United States and Israel with Hamas and the Taliban. It’s wrong. Atlantics Elizabeth Breunig cleared the libel at the time, noting that attacking Omar as anti-American and anti-Semitic had already become normal day-to-day work for the GOP and some Democrats who both seemed to have thought of teaming up against a Muslim progressive. black was a good policy for everyone.

Taken as a whole, the resolution is a remarkable document. It details two instances where Omar’s language about Israel was careless and inadvertently relied on anti-Semitic tropes, followed by several detailed slanders. Almost all involve Omar’s criticism of Israel, which are valid political positions that challenge the GOP’s alliance with Israel’s right-wing government and its policies. By ousting Omar from the committee, House Republicans hope to use their support for Israel to hide much deeper issues of anti-Semitism from their own parties.

For example, the resolution does not mention that the new Republican majority stripping Omar of his Foreign Affairs committee assignment also reinstated Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to committees after Democrats (and a few Republicans) voted to ban him from them over violent rhetoric. Unlike Omar, Greene actually has a problem with anti-Semitism. In a 2018 Facebook post, she accused the Rothschilds of using space lasers to start wildfires in California. (She claimed to have no idea the Rothschilds were frequently invoked to smear the Jewish people.) She was the first QAnon supporter elected to Congress, bringing new prominence to a conspiracy theory infected with anti-Semitism. Last year, she spoke at a conference hosted by Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist Holocaust denier who spoke approvingly of Hitler just before Greene took the stage. When the examination followed, she actually claimed that she didn’t know who Fuentes was.

Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) welcomed Greene as an ally in her heavy bid for House Speaker last month and rewarded her with committee assignments, including a coveted spot on the House Oversight Committee. bedroom. I will never leave this woman, McCarthy reportedly said of Greene after helping him win the presidency. I will always take care of her.

Greene’s brand of anti-Semitism and broader racism, white nationalism and conspiracy theories infect the entire Republican Party. In 2016, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign used images of Jews and money in ways that invoked anti-Semitic tropes far more explicitly than anything Omar is accused of doing. McCarthy himself invoked the same stereotypes against wealthy Jewish figures. And sure enough, after the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville chanted that Jews won’t replace us, Trump said there were good people on both sides.

More recently, Trump, in the middle of his third presidential campaign, had dinner with Fuentes and Ye, the rapper who once went by the name of Kanye West. This was more than a month after Ye tweeted vowing to go to the death against 3 on JEWS and made other anti-Semitic comments. Fuentes is, once again, a racist denying the Holocaust. Like Greene, Trump claimed he didn’t know who Fuentes was. McCarthy and many of his colleagues were hesitant to criticize Trump for dinner. When he was finally put on the spot at a press conference, McCarthy said no one should hang out with Fuentes, falsely claimed that Trump had exposed Fuentes and had nothing to say about him. dinner with Ye. Most elected Republicans have found ways to sidestep the issue.

And yet they nobly ride in defense of the Jews by overthrowing Omar. The GOP has fired on Omar since she was elected. Trump has made a hobby of attacking Omar during his presidency, often portraying her as un-American and accusing her of sympathizing with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. At a rally in North Carolina in 2019, Trump spent several minutes railing at Omar as a terrorist sympathizer until the crowd began chanting Get Her Back! (Omar came to the United States as a refugee in 1995 and has been a citizen since 2000.) Trump’s presidential campaign even targeted the representative in Facebook ads, again portraying her as a terrorist sympathizing with the anti-Semite. . The attacks were replicated by Republicans across the country. Omar has faced death threats following Trump’s attacks.

Omar, speaking before the vote, asked if it was not surprising that, given the GOP’s attempt to smear the first black president as a non-Muslim of African descent, the party has now moved on. to target a black Muslim who was born in Africa.

It’s not. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.), defending Omar in the House, accused fellow Republicans of voting to oust Omar of racism. It’s about targeting women of color in the United States of America, she said.

@motherjonesmag

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez brings her signature to Congress while denouncing the Republican hypocrisy of removing Ilhan Omar from his position on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Check it out. #aoc #ilhanomar #thesquad #foreignaffairs #congress #alexandriaocasiocortez

Scary Violins – Apollo Nove

When you add up the evidence of the parties’ long history of targeting Omar with anti-Muslim smears, his tolerance of anti-Semitism within his own ranks, and the resolution’s weak and fabricated attacks, the obvious and logical verdict is racism.

We don’t need the history books to tell us that. We all know how it happens.

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