Instead Focuses on “Islamophobia” and White Supremacy
Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton Klein and ZOA Chair Mark Levenson, Esq. released the following statement:
The woefully inadequate, watered-down, distorted, so-called “antisemitism” House resolution that passed yesterday fails to even mention the major antisemitism problem of violent Islamist attacks on Jews, or that Congresswomen Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Alexandrea Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) repeatedly defamed the Jewish people and the Jewish state – and have never sincerely apologized. Omar, Tlaib and AOC’s scurrilous statements – such as falsely calling Israel “evil,” falsely accusing Jews of committing massacres against innocent Arabs, accusing Jews of “hypnotizing the world,” accusing Jews of dual loyalty, supporting boycotting and sanctioning Israel, accusing those who defend Israel against defamation of “attacking American free speech rights,” and attributing Americans’ support for our strong ally Israel to Jewish money – were what prompted the House to draft a resolution.
In addition, there were deep concerns over Rep. Tlaib erasing Israel from her office map and replacing Israel with Palestine, supporting BDS, writing for Farrakhan’s newspaper, embracing Abbas Hamideh, a Hezbollah supporter who called Israel an ISIS-like terrorist state and literally wrapping herself in the Palestinian-Arab flag at her swearing-in ceremony. Also, there was concern about Rep. AOC praising antisemite Jeremy Corbyn, claiming Israel massacres peaceful protestors, and being a leader of the Democratic Socialists of America, which calls for the destruction of the Jewish State.
The resolution thus should have focused on Ilhan Omar and her cohorts’ antisemitism and Israel bashing.
Of course, even a good resolution would have been dreadfully inadequate; Omar should be stripped of her committee assignments, just as Congressman Steve King was. It is especially dangerous that Jew-hater Omar still sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where the biased-against-Israel Omar works to destroy the valuable Israel-U.S. alliance, and defends corrupt brutal foreign dictatorships such as Abbas’ Palestinian Authority and Venezuela’s Maduro regime.
There are some somewhat helpful lines in the House resolution, making clear that almost 60% of religious hate crimes are against Jews, and generally condemning “dual loyalty” charges and demonizing stereotypes against Jews, and generally condemning “justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a [never identified] radical ideology or extremist view of [unspecified] religion.” But even these lines sidestep real issues of Islamist antisemitism.
Moreover, the resolution is largely an exercise in appeasement to Islamists.
Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic leadership apparently caved to pressure from Islamist antisemites and terrorist-sympathizers led by Linda Sarsour and CAIR (an unindicted co-conspirator for funneling money to the Jew-hating terrorist group Hamas). The Democratic leadership transformed what was supposed to be an antisemitism resolution, attacking antisemites in Congress by name, into a resolution that attributes antisemitism solely to the KKK, white supremacists and neo-Nazis – and repeatedly portrays Muslims solely as victims of bigotry and “Islamophobia.” The House resolution never mentions the hundreds of antisemitic incidents perpetrated by Islamists against Jews on American college campuses each year, radical Muslim plots to blow up American synagogues, the recent Islamist attack on Jews outside an orthodox Jewish synagogue in Los Angeles, the murderous Islamist shooting attack on Seattle Jewish Federation employees, the Jew-hating San Bernardino Islamists’ specific targeting and murder of a pro-Israel Messianic Jew at the outset of that horrific massacre, or the thousands of Jews whom Palestinian-Arab Islamists have murdered and maimed in Israel, and much more.
By contrast to the absence of any mention of Islamist attacks on Jews, the resolution highlights plots against Muslims and mosques.
If Speaker Pelosi wanted to condemn other bigotries, this should have been done in a separate resolution, instead of fundamentally transforming and dramatically weakening what should have been a resolution focused on condemning antisemitism, including Islamist antisemitism against Jews.
It is also concerning that the House resolution attempts to water down and transform the role of the United States Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, into a broader mandate.
ZOA reiterates our call, and the subsequent call of a dozen other Jewish groups, and a petition signed by over 212,000 people, for the House Democratic leadership to finally do the right thing: Remove Ilhan Omar from her committee assignments, especially the House Foreign Relations Committee.
Legislatures of Minnesota and Michigan need to speak up not Congress.