Lawmakers Ousted US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar From Foreign Affairs Panel Over Israel remarks

US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was fired from the Foreign Affairs Committee over past comments about Israel following the debate on the House Floor on Thursday.

Former Somali refugee Ilhan Omar, the third Democrat to be stripped of committee assignments by Republicans this year, has made several comments critical of Israel since 2012 that was condemned on all sides. Five years earlier, before entering Congress, she said Israel had “hypnotized the world,” and urged people to open their eyes to the US ally’s “evil doings.”

“I am a Muslim, I’m an immigrant and, interestingly, I’m from Africa,” the 40-year-old Minnesota progressive said in a defiant floor speech ahead of her removal from the Foreign Affairs Committee.

The US House of Representatives’ statements

The US House of Representatives voted Thursday, “Today’s vote is not a reflection of Representative Omar, but on the rank hypocrisy of Republican leadership, which has used its power to exact revenge on their political opponents and, in the case of Omar, punish a member to satisfy the extreme MAGA( Make American Great Again) wing of their party,” the statement said.

This decision came after Pmar had made what Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently described as “repeated anti-Semitic and anti-American remarks” through her time as a member of the house. The resolution explicitly condemns Omar for using an anti-Semitic trope to suggest Israel’s allies in US politics were motivated by money rather than principle when she in 2019 tweeted,” it’s all about the Benjamins baby”.

“If the purpose of this vote is to punish a member for anti-Semitism, this resolution should not be aimed at a representative who has apologized and learned from her mistakes, but those within their own party who’ve yet to apologize for their anti-Semitic remark and actions. It should be condemning Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Jewish spacefarers fame for spreading conspiracies that ‘Zionist supremacists’ are flooding Europe with migrants to replace white populations. It should be condemning Rep. Miller for quoting Adol f Hitler in Congressional remarks, or Rep. Gosar for inviting a Holocaust denier to the state of the Union,” the statement added.

The statement also stated,” this resolution should condemn Speaker McCarthy himself for his November 6th tweet accusing three Jewish men of buying the election, an anti-Semitic dog whistle about Jewish money buying an election”.

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