Often, a single bigoted remark is enough to effectively end a politician’s career. Not so for Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar (D), who survived her third controversy on Wednesday when she accused pro-Israel Americans of maintaining a dual loyalty to Israel.
Speaking at a “Progressive Issues Town Hall” event in Washington, D.C., alongside fellow Muslim congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), a defiant Omar declared: “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”
Business as usual for Ilhan Omar
Omar’s latest antisemitic slur occurred after an audience member shouted, “It’s all about the Benjamins,” a reference to the freshman lawmaker’s February tweet suggesting that Israeli interests paid members of Congress to silence their criticism. Both statements represent classic antisemitic tropes which have been used by hate groups to in the past to slander Jews.
Tlaib made a similar transgression in January when she said that U.S. Senators who supported a pro-Israel bill “forgot what country they represent.”
The Anti-Defamation League reminded Tlaib that “any charge of dual loyalty has special sensitivity and resonance for Jews, particularly in an environment of rising anti-Semitism.”
After her colleague was reprimanded for making the same mistake, Omar can hardly feign ignorance of the antisemitic canard. However, she did just that the last time she came under fire for making the “Benjamins” tweet, thanking her colleagues for “educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes,” as if she had no clue that her statement might be offensive.
Ironically, Omar managed to offend Jewish Americans with the dual loyalty smear moments after unrepentantly complaining about how she and her colleague were accused of antisemitism “because Rashida and I are Muslim ….” She explained:
[A] lot of our Jewish colleagues, a lot of our constituents, a lot of our allies go to thinking that everything we say about Israel to be anti-Semitic because we are Muslim … And so to me it is something that becomes designed to end the debate … And that ends the discussion. Because we end up defending that and nobody ever gets to have the broader debate of what is happening with Palestine.
Chorus of critics
In fact, Omar’s critics accuse her of bigotry because she has revealed it multiple times. Liberal pundit Jonathan Chait, who has defended Democrats against accusations of antisemitism in the past, insisted that Omar’s latest remarks were “much worse” than previous instances where she provoked the Jewish community.
Writing for New York magazine, Chait explained, “Accusing Jews of ‘allegiance to a foreign country’ is a historically classic way of delegitimizing their participation in the political system … Omar is directly invoking the hoary myth of dual loyalty, in which the Americanness of Jews is inherently suspect, and their political participation must be contingent upon proving their patriotism.”
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens joined the chorus of voices critical of Omar. “Rep. [Omar] seems to calculate that if she makes only one blatantly anti-Semitic remark per week, progressives will forgive her,” he tweeted. “Is she right?”
“I defended her last round — as having said something troubling & insensitive. It’s hard to defend this,” wrote author and radio host David Rothkopf.
So far, the answer seems to be a resounding “yes.” Instead of being removed from the influential House Foreign Affairs Committee after her “Benjamins” comment, Omar was rewarded with a Rolling Stones cover, appearing next to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democratic figures.
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