House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seemed to take aim at freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar on Tuesday morning, condemning as anti-Semitic the Minnesota Democrat’s ideas about Israel and its American supporters.
“The United States will continue to champion a foreign policy that reaffirms Israel’s right to self defense. In our democratic societies, we should welcome legitimate debate about how best to honor our values and to advance our priorities without questioning loyalty or patriotism,” Pelosi, a California Democrat, told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference.
Pelosi’s AIPAC speech was the latest effort by Democratic leaders to marginalize Omar, who has opened a divide among congressional Democrats through her support for a boycott against the Jewish state and her subsequent suggestion that senior lawmakers have an inappropriate “allegiance” to Israel. Pelosi rebuffed that idea by touting a recent House-passed resolution that condemned such dual-loyalty charges — which Omar’s allies succeeded in amending to cover a broader set of bigotries — and offering her own terse rebuke.
“This month, the full House came together to condemn the anti-Semitic myth of dual loyalty, and all forms of bigotry, with a resolution that ‘rejects the perpetuation of anti-Semitic stereotypes in the United States and around the world, including the pernicious myth of dual loyalty and foreign allegiance, especially in the context of support for the United States-Israel alliance,'” Pelosi said. “I simply declare to be anti-Semitic is to be anti-American. It has no place in our country.” She said later that there are “signs” of anti-Semitism “in our own country.”
Pelosi also took aim at the BDS movement that Omar favors, which calls for boycotts and economic pressure analogous to the tactics that brought down the apartheid South African government at the end of the Cold War.
“We must also be vigilant against bigoted or dangerous ideologies masquerading as policy, and that includes BDS,” Pelosi declared.
“Did you know this? It does not recognize — and many of its supporters don’t know or explicitly deny — it does not recognize the right of Jewish people to national self determination,” Pelosi said. “If you care about American security, you must care about Israel’s security,” she added.
The controversy with Omar left Democrats vulnerable to Republican jibes throughout the AIPAC conference. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman James Risch referred to the issue as “the donkey in the room.”
“BDS is pure, unadulterated racism,” the Idaho Republican said Monday night. “There’s no place for that in America. The Jewish people have been really discriminated against for centuries. BDS is an attempt by people to continue that. It’s wrong. It’s un-American. It shouldn’t be allowed.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pushed back against the criticism of Democrats in his own Monday evening address.
“I’m proud that the overwhelming majority of Democrats are pro-Israel and have always been,” the New York Democrat said. “Every single Democrat, every single one of the Caucus signed a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations expressing concern about their vicious anti-Israel bias and Democrats united unanimously supported the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act. Now, it happened to be blocked by a Republican senator, but it would be wrong to say he represents the entire Republican Party and I never will.” Schumer was referring to Kentucky senator Rand Paul.
