Congress Must Reject Omar Before She Makes Anti-Semitism Acceptable: Rabbi Aryeh Spero
National Conference on Jewish Affairs (NCJA) spokesman Rabbi Aryeh Spero released the following press statement via email to Conservative Base and Police Times Magazine today:
“It is becoming more obvious by the day – even by the tweet-hour – that newly elected Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is anti-Semitic and is peddling her anti-Israel and anti-Jewishness through the well-known and effective drip-by-drip method.
It is a strategy, as we have seen from Islamists in Europe, where an anti-Israel or anti-Jewish statement is made and then partially retracted after an uproar. It is repeated multiple times, followed by multiple half-hearted retractions with the goal and effect being the slow but inevitable seepage of anti-Jewish caricatures into the country’s political discourse and into the minds of its people.
“This successful strategy has poisoned Europe’s discourse against Jews and Israel and is being imported here with the arrival into Congress of Ms. Omar and Ms. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
“The question today is: Do the leaders of the U.S. Congress, and especially House Speaker Ms. Pelosi, have the conviction and will to oust this never-ending shower of anti-Jewish rhetoric as they would if such was being said against other groups. Will they permanently shut this down before it metastasizes as it has in Europe and is unfolding in front of our very eyes?
“There is no question that Ms. Omar’s playing-innocent type of apologies are done in such a manner to momentarily quell the outcry against her remarks while assuring her base that she has not capitulated to the powers outside her community. Her nonchalant use of anti-Semitic stereotypes and language is furthermore disturbing for it reflects a communal comfort with and approval of anti-Semitic ideas that most Americans deem beyond the pale.
“Of course she should be censured and, beyond that, removed from the very powerful and influential House Foreign Affairs Committee that Speaker Pelosi surprisingly granted to this first-year legislator. Omar’s thinking, her conduct, and her blithe willingness to inject anti-Semitic tropes into the legislative process make her unfit to hold such a strategic position.
“She and Ms. Tlaib have come to Congress with an unprecedented brazenness, defiance, and impropriety that go beyond mere difference of opinion. Right out of the gate, both women have overridden expected norms as single-minded propagandists eager to use their presence and committee positions as platforms to propagandize against Israel, and Jews who support Israel, by making the heretofore unacceptable now acceptable.
“No one should be afraid to censure and remove Ms. Omar from the Committee as a way of stopping the drip-by-drip plot to sully Israel and the Jewish people; nor be afraid of being labeled ‘anti-woman,’ or ‘racist,’ or ‘Islamophobic.’ Her defenders, and organizations here such as CAIR, will label her censure indicative of the ‘power of the Zionists,’ but what it will in fact be is the power of justice and the American way.”
Contact: Rabbi Aryeh Spero (212) 252-6861
