Lost in the incomprehensible word salad of the freewheeling, Trumpian, and mathematically illiterate performance of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., on CNN today was the more ominous fact that the Democratic Party rewarded her, an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, with a place on the prestigious House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Omar, who replaced accused domestic abuser Keith Ellison in Congress, is no run-of-the-mill Democrat. She openly supports the boycott, divest, and sanction movement against Israel. She cozied up to Farrakhan fan Linda Sarsour on the day she entered Congress. But most damning is a tweet from 2012, in which she invokes a classic anti-Semitic trope.
“Israel has hypnotized the world,” wrote Omar in the now hotly contested tweet. “May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza #Palestine #Israel.”
Omar has conducted two interviews in the last 24 hours, in which she was given opportunities to explain the tweet. To Christiane Amanpour, Omar called the language “unfortunate,” claiming that they were “the only words” she could think of to describe Israel’s 2012 airstrike offensive in Gaza. To Poppy Harlow and Jim Sciutto, she said, “I don’t know how my comments could be offensive to Jewish-Americans.”
I could think of a few ways. For one thing, painting Israel as a nefarious Jewish cabal spreading its tentacles around the globe doesn’t do much to curb the idea that emphatic critics of Israel simply opposed the government and not the people. But more significantly, Omar had seven years to think of an answer, an explanation, or even straight-up lie about a political evolution in order to save face. The best she could come up with was little more than a shrug.
Even worse is that Democrats aren’t just refusing to condemn her for this — they are also giving her a prestigious committee seat that could have gone to someone who hates Jews a lot less.
Omar is having quite a week. She also promulgated a homophobic conspiracy theory about a sitting United States senator. On Jan. 13, Jon Cooper went viral for tweeting that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is gay and “kowtowing to Trump” because he’s being “blackmailed” over “some pretty serious sexual kink.” A few days later, Stephanie Ruhle evidently endorsed the theory on MSNBC, and just a few hours later, Omar tweeted about Graham, “They got to him, he is compromised!”
Omar picked up the baton today, swearing that “lots of Americans” agree with the conspiracy, sticking by the opinion amid Democratic silence on the matter.
The Right is still grappling with homophobia, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy theorists in their ranks. But the Left can’t even manage to grapple where Omar is concerned.
