The following is a letter from Morton Klein, President of the National Zionist Organization of America to Nancy Pelosi:
Dear Madam Speaker,
We are writing to you to express our profound, even frightened concern and, indeed, our pained astonishment that you have decided to appoint newly-elected legislator, Representative Ihlan Omar, to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
We cannot believe that Representative Omar has been appointed to the Committee on the strength on any particular expertise or competence she holds in foreign affairs.
We do know, however, that Representative Omar has a horrific and frightening record of viciously anti-Israel actions that amount to antisemitism as defined by the State Department definition of antisemitism as determined in its May 2016 document, ‘Defining antisemitism.’
Rep. Omar’s hatred of the Jewish State of Israel renders her hopelessly biased against Israel, making it impossible to make a reasonable, rational decision on any issue concerning Israel and the Arab/Islamic world.
Far from marginalizing her, disowning her views and disassociating yourself from her, as you would have undoubtedly done, were Representative Omar guilty of comparably vicious statements and activity and hatred against African Americans, Muslims or gay people, you have seen fit to actually reward her by appointing her to the House Foreign Relations Committee.
Your appointment of Representative Omar sends a frightening message that vicious anti-Israel actions and antisemitism is acceptable and, thus, serves to mainstream and legitimize antisemitism and Israel bashing, something we would have thought would be anathema to the Democratic Party or any respected American political party.
The Democratic Party once included the proudest Congressional supporters of Israel, like Senators Henry Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Hubert Humphrey. We frankly find it difficult to fathom how you and other Democratic legislators whom we have believed were friends of our important Middle East ally, the Jewish state of Israel, could have appointed her to a Committee which deals with America’s relations with Israel.
Representative Omar, once elected in last year’s midterm elections, confirmed to the website Muslim Girl that she supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which, as openly admitted by its originators, seeks to delegitimize, economically harm and ultimately eliminate the Jewish State of Israel by criminalizing business relations with Israeli Jews.
In short, Representative Omar is not only the first Member of Congress to openly support BDS, but she appears to have deliberately misled Jewish constituents on her position regarding BDS prior to last year’s midterm elections. This is simply scandalous.
In a November 2012 tweet, Representative Omar also made a statement invoking time-honored anti-Semitic images of enormous and malign Jewish power, saying, “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and see the evil doings of Israel.”
Challenged about this extraordinary anti-Semitic tweet in the past week, Representative Omar disingenuously professed not to understand how this statement could be construed as “offensive” to Jews.
In 2017, as a Minnesota state legislator, Omar was one of only two legislators who voted against a bill aimed at denying life insurance payments to any person convicted of aiding or committing terror acts. (The bill ultimately passed and was signed into law). Representative Omar did not offer an explanation for her vote when approached for comment in August by the Washington Free Beacon.
The same year, Representative Omar voted against a bill that would bar the state of Minnesota from contracting with companies that engage in BDS — a bill which passed with large bipartisan majorities and was signed into law by Democratic Governor Mark Dayton.
In a May 2018 tweet, Representative Omar labelled Israel an “apartheid Israeli regime,” a statement that, on a purely intellectual level, is either knowingly false or astoundingly ignorant. What reason other than bigoted hostility can account for her accusing the only democratic nation in the Middle East, which grants more liberal rights to its Muslim citizens than any Arab nation, of being an “apartheid regime”?
These words and deeds clearly cross the line into antisemitism. Also, in Representative Omar’s gutter criticism of Israel as an “apartheid regime,” she is clearly guilty of “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.”
Also, in viciously defaming legitimate Israeli defense of its citizens from Hamas rocket barrages, she is also guilty of “applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” She also referred to Israel as a “regime”, a term reserved for totalitarian, fascist or terrorist countries.
The ZOA was deeply concerned about Representative Omar’s record during the run-up to last year’s midterms as well as after her election, since her vicious and extreme anti-Israel positions were ignored almost entirely by the media.
We asked at the time why no one in the Democratic Party had come forward to criticize and challenge her statements. Now, it would appear that her appalling anti-Israel record is not only being entirely ignored by the Democratic Party but, what is far worse, is being richly rewarded. What other conclusion is possible when the Democratic Speaker of the House appoints her to a coveted seat on the House Foreign Relations Committee?
We cannot understand why you have made this appointment. After all, you yourself have stated publicly that Congress must oppose BDS, and your senior Senate colleague, Senator Charles Schumer, has frankly described BDS as constituting “antisemitism.” Are we to conclude that these statements were hollow and that we cannot rely any more upon the sincerity of Congressional Democrats who profess to support the state of Israel and to oppose antisemitism?
Representative Omar’s appointment to the House Foreign Relations Committee is a deeply mistaken, unwarranted, unjustifiable and dangerous development. We respectfully and earnestly urge you to rescind this appointment immediately and to publicly reassure the American Jewish community that the Democratic Party is opposed to BDS and extreme anti-Israel activism.
Omar should be condemned and marginalized by fellow Democrats and others, not given important posts.
Your actions will add to the mainstreaming of antisemitism and Israel-bashing that is dangerously on the rise in the world and in America.
Yours sincerely,
Morton A. Klein
National President
Zionist Organization of America (ZOA)
Your welcome. I was amazed even little old “innocuous” Kingsborough- a community college with a beach, has been effected/infected by this kind of political venom. I myself eventually graduated from Brooklyn College in 1981 after attending there for two years while continuing working part time at Kingsborough and I’m familiar with how this “Students For Justice in Palestine” has infiltrated campus life there in recent years. That’s hard enough to believe but Kingsborough, which when I was affiliated with it, was practically a country club by any normal comparisons when it originally opened probably in the early 70’s. For me it’s personally interesting but, realistic, is a dangerous indication of the kind of political subversion from within that’s taking place all over that’s really not so subversively hidden. The fact that despite this awareness, despite knowing this foot-in-thr door method of gaining, at first influence, and then power, is being done supposedly under our radar but actually in front of our eyes makes one wonder what we would or could do when they stop hiding the pretense that it’s simply political debate and come at us straight out and overtly. That’s the real lesson that needs to be learned. In other words, how should someone be surprised when the real attack takes place when they have been telegraphing there intent all along. The one benefit of 9/11 is I can be indulged to use the word, was that they attacked when our guard was down changing the US’s posture from that point on which actually safeguarded us much better from that point on. Had they not “let the cat out of the bag” with that attack, and kept their intentions hidden further until our guard was let down even more,they could have inflicted more damage and gotten further in their Jihad before we woke up and started taking the fight to them. All that from Kingsborough-it’s a microcosm of the pervasiveness of the simultaneous 9/11 political jihadism from within. If America is caught with it’s pant’s down when this “hidden political jihad” strikes, it might be too late to prevent it. Basically, there won’t be a second chance. And the movement of the Democratic Party of today is an even clearer indication in front of our very eyes of the influence this politics jihadism has had on the mainstream political thinking of today’s Democrats. A lot of us know they have lost there minds- except them. That’s how it always works. A foot-in-the door brainwashing/indoctrination the likes of which you usually only read about in the formation of cults. And cultists will try to take you with them even if you’re on to what they are doing. But everybody needs to be aware of what this is all about. And everybody has to educate themselves to give pushback and not expect others to do it for the. That’s what they’re counting on. A sort of “diffusion of responsibility” for maintaining one’s own defense. If we’re not careful ,before long our only recourse will be for us to leave. What is the expresiion::”Ignor at your own peril”. People might like identifying with liberalism but eventually they will come for them too.
@ David E Chase: I don’t know the answer to these questions. Someone should contact Hikind. Thanks for the background about Kingsborough, David.
I once worked at Kingsborough Community College doing math and science tutoring because my mother worked in it’s Tutorial Services office as a secretary a long time ago. I had anti-Semitic experiences myself then too but not from communist Jew-hating faculty at that time. Just verbal abuses from then ignorant Italian bullies. KKC is located in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn which was an upscale mostly Jewish neighborhood back then bordering on a very Jewish Brighton Beach. Where do the students of this Kingsborough’s “Students For Justice in Palestine” live nowadays in Brooklyn to amass enough numbers to enable a professor like this to function? Does Dov Hikind know about this?
See this article in World Israel News about teacher-administrator at CUNY’s Kingsborough College branch, who has been subjected to relentless harassment and threats, even to his 13-year-old daughter, because he is pro-Israel and a Zionist. The harassment campaign is being organized by Communist faculty members who control the campus chapter of “Students for Justice in Palestine.”https://worldisraelnews.com/win-exclusive-anti-semitic-campus-group-turns-jewish-professors-life-into-hell/
So true also when it’s so blatant and undisguised. Obama was the e-itome of slick and there that much more dangerous and stomach turning. I actually believe the three Judeocidal retards that just got elected will poetically serve the Jewish people exptremely well by making so obvious a lot of us knew about at least some of the Democratic for a while but were themselves slick enough to mask it. Their arrogance is already blowing the lid off the umbrella of the universally embraced Obama mask concealing the true Jew hatred of the Democratic Party. How does Schumer maintain himself psychologically as the practical head and even leader of this party? Forget hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance- where’s his pride? Where’s his dignity as a politician and, above everything, as a Jew? I witnessed him when campaigning for the Senate the first time in 1998 when he stopped by the Shul I then belonged to and attended in Queens shouting or cheering “Am Yisrael Chai”. I was there. Chuck, start saying it again. The kitche political tool of “Schumer Shabbos” spread around New York since you first ran for office in 1974 has to mean something. As is often said: There is no tomorrow”- Stand with the Jewish people. Hashem is testing you. It’s bad enough you hesitated? on the Iranian deal. Don’t hide now and start shouting “Am Yisrael Chai” from the rooftop of the Capital building and snuff these vile creatures who somehow are now infecting Congress. There should be no wall between you and the American people or, especially, between you and the Jewish people on this matter.
@ David Chase:
So true but much much better late than never
Meet Obama unmasked. Only after eight years of Obamaism could such vile trash emerge.