EXCLUSIVE – Roseanne Barr: 'We Have Hamas in Congress'

TEL AVIV – Comedian Roseanne Barr claimed “We have Hamas in Congress” in reference to the congressional freshman class of 2019, which includes anti-Israel congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. 

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News in Tel Aviv on Monday evening, Barr said BDS has “infected” the Democratic Party.

Asked what she thought of the newly-installed outspoken BDS proponents Tlaib (D-MI) and Omar (D-MN), Barr said, “We have Hamas in Congress.”

Both Tlaib and Omar have come under fire for invoking anti-Semitic tropes in relation to Israel. Tlaib, a Palestinian-American, seemingly deployed a “dual loyalty” canard when she accused proponents of anti-BDS legislation of “forgetting which country they represent,” while Somali-American Omar once charged “evil” Israel with “hypnotizing the world.”

Barr pooh-poohed recent remarks made by two top Jewish Democrats, Reps. Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Ted Deutch (D-FL), who maintained that the Democratic Party will remain steadfast in its support of Israel and that Omar and Tlaib are the only two people to express such views within the party.

“There’s a lot more than that,” she said.

“The Democratic Party will eventually move to [being] pro-BDS,” Barr told Breitbart News.

According to the funnywoman, “BDS is another incarnation of Jew-hating” that has been going on for centuries.

“It’s a boycott of Jewish business worldwide,” she said. “Nobody knows that because they think it’s about the ‘occupation,’ which doesn’t exist of course.”

Barr maintained that since the BDS movement does not limit itself to boycotting Israeli companies and institutions, but expressly supports the boycott of companies that have any dealings with Israel — a large percentage of which are naturally Jewish-owned — the boycott is comparable to that of Nazi Germany.

“So it’s a Nazi boycott on Jewish business in shorthand,” she said.

“You can barely make people listen to that because they’re so anti-Semitic,” she went on to charge, “including Jews in America on the left. They’re complete anti-Semites.”

“They hate Jews, they hate Judaism and they hate the Jewish state because it’s chic. And they don’t know anything about it,” she maintained.

According to Barr, the left has found “an acceptable target for bigotry” with Jews.

“There is no occupation,” Barr said, referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “The only occupation I see is they built a dome on top of our Temple and I’m not allowed to pray at my holiest site.”

Earlier on Monday, Barr gave a speech to an enthusiastic audience of some 500 Israelis and new immigrants in Tel Aviv organized by the Tel Aviv International Salon in conjunction with the Times of Israel.

She told the audience that her eponymous show was cancelled last year because she was essentially boycotted.

“I was BDSed by ABC,” Barr said in a comment that was met with resounding applause.

When asked if she would forgive her former cast-mates — Sara Gilbert, Kathy Griffin and Sandra Bernhard — for failing to stand up for her in the wake of her infamous tweet against former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, an acerbic Barr said, “I will if they apologize. But they’re leftists and leftists never apologize.”