Fact-Check: Ilhan Omar’s Bogus Statement Slamming Kevin McCarthy

WASHINGTON (Yaakov M / VINnews) — Antisemite Ilhan Omar released a statement in response to Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s heroic pledge to strip her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. 

Below are her comments, as well as our response. 

From the moment I was elected, the Republican Party has made it their mission to use fear, xenophobia, Islamophobia and racism to target me on the House Floor and through millions of dollars of campaign ads. 

FALSE. The Republican party supports many black and minority leaders including Tim Scott and Ben Carson, and Larry Elder. They are not racist or Islamaphobic, they do not support based on skin color, but based on ideology.

They are targeting you (and not other Muslims) because you’re anti-American, pro-BDS and antisemitic. You have called Israel an apartheid state guilty of “evil doings”, you’ve accused politicians of supporting Israel for the “Benjamins”, and you minimized the horrific 9/11 attacks. 

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Kevin McCarthy does not “target” other black, brown, or foreign-born Democrats who are sincere and love America. 

Whether it is Marjorie Taylor Greene holding a gun next to my head in campaign ads or Donald Trump threatening to ‘send me back’ to my country (despite the fact that I have been a proud citizen of the United States for more than 20 years), this constant stream of hate has led to hundreds of death threats and credible plots against me and my family.  

FALSE. Trump never threatened to send you back, he astutely and correctly observed that since you despise America, which gave you the freedom to become a member of congress, why not go back to Somalia where they torture women like yourself and oppress innocent people?

Drawing attention to the apartheid Israeli regime is far from hating Jews. You are a hateful sad man, I pray to Allah you get the help you need and find happiness. https://t.co/SvEXjlxlEN

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) May 31, 2018

At the same time, they have openly tolerated antisemitism, anti-Muslim hate and racism in their own party. Newly-elected Whip Tom Emmer said prominent Jewish Democrats ‘essentially bought control of Congress.’ And McCarthy himself accused Jewish Democrats of trying to ‘buy elections.’ Instead of doing anything to address the open hostility towards religious minorities in his party, McCarthy is now lifting up people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Emmer and so many others. If he cared about addressing the rise in hate, he would apologize and make sure others in his party apologized. 

Kevin McCarthy and Tom Emmer never accused “Jews” of buying elections. They tweeted and sent a letter (respectively) about three specific Democrat billionaire mega donors who happen to be Jews–Tom Steyer, Mike Bloomberg, and George Soros. (Incidentally Tom Steyer is not Jewish, although his biological father reportedly was.) 

While I don’t defend the inference of the letter and the now-deleted tweet, and some may construe it as antisemitic, it was not blatantly so, nor did it generalize about “the Jews” as Omar suggests. 

In addition, McCarthy and the entire Republican party have been staunch supporters of Israel and the Jewish people. 

All this aside, even if Omar is correct that these or any other Republicans made antisemitic comments, that does not condone Omar’s long history of venomous and vicious hatred. 

McCarthy’s effort to repeatedly single me out for scorn and hatred—including threatening to strip me from my committee—does nothing to address the issues our constituents deal with. It does nothing to address inflation, healthcare, or solve the climate crisis. 

McCarthy has neither scorn nor hatred as you suggest. On the contrary, he is protecting Jews from YOUR scorn and hatred. Stripping you of your seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee does indeed help many constituents. 

It was disgraceful for a pro-BDS enemy of Israel who despises her country to be placed on such an esteemed committee in the first place. In addition, for a socialist like you to invoke inflation, which your radical policies are responsible for creating and skyrocketing, is egregious and hypocritical. 

What it does is gin up fear and hate against Somali-Americans and anyone who shares my identity, and further divide us along racial and ethnic lines. It is a continuation of a sustained campaign against Muslim and African voices, people in his party have been trying to ban since Donald Trump first ran for office.

Stop playing the bogus race card. You “gin up fear and hate against Somali-Americans” with your vicious rhetoric and veiled support for radical Islam. You and the Squad have done more to divide along racial and ethnic lines than Kevin McCarthy, Donald Trump, or any other Republican. Nobody ever tried to ban Muslim or African voices. Unlike the left, we don’t ban people we disagree with. President Trump banned 5 or 6 terrorist countries from entering the US, but allowed the other 65 Muslim countries. 

I will not stop fighting for more equitable, more just and more humane policies. I will not stop advocating for peace and human rights around the world. And I will not stop fighting for an America that does not single out people based on their race or religion.”

You are the real racist. Most people on the right (other than a tiny minority) do not care about skin color. Your party, beginning with President Biden, sees everything through a prism of race. Your rhetoric is divisive and your entire platform is built upon inequality and social justice. 

Full statement on Kevin McCarthy threat: pic.twitter.com/IAOP27ujlt

— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) November 21, 2022

Here are some of Omar’s past comments:

In 2012 she tweeted: “Israel has hypnotized the world. May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”

She then defended her remarks: “Drawing attention to the apartheid Israeli regime is far from hating Jews. You are a hateful sad man, I pray to Allah you get the help you need and find happiness.”

More recently she tweeted: “We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity,” referring to U.S. opposition to the International Criminal Court investigating potential war crimes in the Gaza conflict and Afghanistan. “We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban,” she wrote.

In 2019 she implied that pro-Israel campaigns were motivated by financial profits, writing on Twitter: “It’s all about the Benjamins baby”.

She once referred to the 9/11 hijackers as: “Some people did something.”