Democratic Squad member Ilhan Omar of Minnesota has managed to keep herself in the headlines all through the ongoing pro-Hamas protests that have been roiling the country for weeks. Unfortunately for her, they have mostly been all the wrong sorts of headlines. After her daughter Isra Hirsi was arrested at Columbia University and suspended, Omar rushed to the scene. But rather than trying to straighten her daughter out, she spoke of how “proud” she was of her antics. To make matters worse, she then accused some of the Jewish students at the school of supporting genocide. That was apparently yet another bridge too far for some House Republicans, including Congressman Don Bacon (R-Neb.) who is currently working on a motion of censure against Omar. How he believes that that will change anything is unclear. (Newsmax)
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., is again facing censure in the House after referring to some Jewish students at Columbia University as pro-genocide.
Omar, who is of Somali heritage and a member of the “Squad,” a faction of extreme left-wing Democrats, made the comments Thursday during a visit to the tent encampment set up by pro-Palestinian protesters at the university. Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, a junior at Columbia’s sister school Barnard College, was among a number of protesters arrested April 18 and then suspended for participating in the encampment.
The Columbia protesters are demanding the university divest itself from companies that they claim profit from Israel’s war against Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
The comments in question took place during an interview that Omar gave to WNYW-TV in New York last week. (You can watch the interview here.) If I’m being fair, the remarks were rather tame by Omar’s usual standards. She even sounded as if she was trying to express some sympathy for Jewish students at Columbia and condemning the worst antisemitic activity. She said she had met a number of Jewish students and thought that it was “really unfortunate that people don’t care about the fact that all Jewish kids should be kept safe.” She went on to claim that we shouldn’t “tolerate antisemitism or bigotry for all Jewish students.”
If she had simply stopped talking at that point she would have been fine and likely would have won some accolades, even from her critics. Sadly, she somehow felt compelled to add the caveat, “whether they are pro-genocide or anti-genocide.” The implication was clear. Any Jewish student (or anyone, for that matter) who supports the right of Israel to defend itself and defeat the Hamas terrorists is “pro-genocide.” Of course, that’s an obviously false choice. Israel isn’t engaged in genocide. The people chanting about intifada and the erasure of the Jewish state are the ones who are advocating genocide against the Jews.
The unfortunate reality here is that even if Don Bacon is successful in ramming through another censure of Ilhan Omar, little is likely to change. She was already taken down once for her antisemitic comments and it resulted in her removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. But nobody has suggested ejecting her from the House over comments she made outside of the chambers.
The only people with the ability to legally remove Omar would be the voters of her district. At least thus far they have not seemed inclined to do so. But now that the antisemitic chickens have come home to roost and caused damage that simply can’t be ignored, might that change? Ilhan Omar has won three elections in a row in that district, with margins ranging from 64 to 78%. She’s already drawn a primary challenger in the form of Don Samuels, who is regarded as a popular Democrat in the area as well. But he tried the same thing in 2022 and came up short. Might these recent events be enough to turn off some of Omar’s supporters and give Samuels a chance? Time will tell.