President Donald Trump could have expressed his deep concerns about extremist anti-American, antisemitic, Israel-phobic Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in a more appropriate way by using a less controversial phrase. Still, we understand his frustrations with these extremists that led to his using an inappropriate phrase.
The vicious attacks on President Trump this week, including the Democrats’ party-line House resolution condemning the president’s calling out of these haters, are an intentional distraction from the real problem, which the House of Representatives still refuses to properly address: the repeated, appalling, antisemitic, Israel-phobic, bigoted, hateful, anti-American statements and actions of these rookie members of Congress.
President Trump is understandably and appropriately disgusted with thems. I am, too. President Trump’s comments had nothing to do with those members’ gender or skin color. He would undoubtedly have strongly condemned white male Congress members if they had repeatedly made such ugly comments against America and its closest ally, the Jewish State of Israel, and the Jewish people.
As Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY) summed it up, “our opposition to our socialist colleagues has absolutely nothing to do with their gender, with their religion or with their race; it has to do with the content of their policies. . . . They’re wrong when they espouse and enable, and their leadership refuses to condemn, vile anti-Semitism. They’re wrong when they rush to blame America first, when they fail to recognize that this is the greatest nation that has ever existed, the exceptional nation.”
In a rational world, vicious America-hating and Jew-hating members of Congress would be booted out of Congress, or at the very least, be removed from their powerful committee posts. These haters would be soundly condemned by the House of Representatives, and by all decent people.
And in a rational world, President Donald Trump would be praised to the skies for calling out those hate-filled Congress members, after a cowardly House of Representatives refused to do so. The president would also be sincerely appreciated for his tremendous achievements, for making Americans safer and more prosperous, and for keeping his promises to treat our ally Israel as the valuable ally that she is, instead of like a second-class citizen, as the previous administration did.
But we are living in an upside down world, in which vicious haters go scot-free and our courageous president, who calls out the haters, is falsely condemned as a “racist.”
Let’s look at the facts.
Rep. Ilhan Omar demanded that an American judge should show “compassion” for convicted Somali ISIS terrorists and give them lighter sentences. es, convicted ISIS terrorists! ISIS – the group that slaughtered innocent Americans in San Bernardino, California, Orlando, Florida and elsewhere.
Ilhan Omar also laughed, laughed (!) about Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and al Shabaab terrorists; complained that Americans say the names “Al Qaeda,” “Al Shabaab” and “Hezbollah” as if those names were a bad thing (apparently, in Omar’s book, it’s not a bad thing that these designated terror groups murdered thousands of Americans); blamed U.S. “involvement in other people’s affairs” for terrorism; refused to answer whether she supports Al Qaeda; and dismissively called the Islamic terrorists who murdered 3,000 Americans on 9/11 “some people who did something.”
Omar repeatedly expresses her vicious hatred of Jews and Israel. She promotes the anti-Israel, antisemitic, discriminatory boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, after lying about her BDS position while running for Congress. She has made false antisemitic claims that Jewish money buys Congress; condemned supporters of Israel; defamed Israel as guilty of “evil doings” after Hamas lobbed massive numbers of rockets into Israel; hurled antisemitic accusations that Israel “hypnotized” the world; falsely maligned the democratic state of Israel as an “apartheid Israeli regime”; and abused her position on the House Foreign Affairs Committee to rudely lambaste the Jewish U.S. envoy on Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, without giving him an opportunity to respond.
Omar is again demonstrating her bigoted, unbridled hatred of the Jewish people by introducing a congressional resolution to promote anti-Jewish, anti-Israel boycotts.
Not surprisingly, while falsely claiming that support for Israel is based on “the Benjamins,” the hypocritical Omar is financially backed by the worst anti-American and anti-Israel propagandists and PACs.
And let’s not forget Omar’s vicious, completely lacking-in-evidence claim that Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is “compromised,” and was somehow blackmailed into supporting President Trump.
Yet despite Ilhan Omar’s long horrific record, the branch of Congress where Omar sits does nothing.
Rashida Tlaib wrapped herself in the Palestinian flag to celebrate her primary election victory; posed for a photo with a well-known Hezbollah terrorist group supporter after her official swearing-in ceremony (despite the fact that Hezbollah is responsible for the death of hundreds of Americans); closely associates with a long list of terrorists and vicious antisemites; said that the Holocaust gives her a “calming feeling”; falsely calls Israel a “racist country” despite Israel’s enormous racial diversity and Israel’s daring rescues of huge numbers of black Ethiopian Jews and other dark-skinned Jews to live in freedom in Israel; supports antisemitic BDS and the destruction of Israel in favor of an Arab-dominated state; absurdly claimed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired her views when in fact King was an outspoken supporter of Israel; and placed a post-it with the word “Palestine” over Israel on her Congressional map, to indicate her support for eliminating the Jewish state and replacing Israel with a 23rd Arab state.
And the branch of Congress where Tlaib sits does nothing.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) maligned the United States and defiled the memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, all in one stroke, by falsely claiming that the detention centers for illegal migrants are “concentration camps.” AOC is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America – which supports antisemitic BDS. AOC refused to condemn BDS or join other freshman Congress members in a visit to Israel. AOC falsely and maliciously accused Israel of committing a “massacre” against Gaza “protesters” when in fact the Palestinian-Arabs concerned were murderous rioters attempting to enter Israel to murder Jews, and when even Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad admitted that that most of the rioters were these terror groups’ members. And AOC’s chief-of-staff wears a T-shirt depicting a Nazi collaborator.
And the branch of Congress where AOC sits does nothing.
Instead, the left wrongly condemns Trump as a “racist” for calling out congresswomen who should be called out. Former Democratic New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind tweeted a wonderful cartoon that says the same:
Moreover, absurdly, after Trump correctly called out these members’ vicious antisemitism and Israel-hatred, the left accused Trump of “weaponizing” antisemitism and Israel!
We are in deep trouble if calling out vicious hatred of the Jewish state and people subjects someone to such ludicrous accusations.
As a Jew and child of Holocaust survivors, and president of the Zionist Organization of America, I am deeply grateful to President Trump for calling out the haters of America, Israel, and the American and Jewish people.
It’s not racist to call out America-haters and Jew-haters.
I am also saddened by and ashamed of those leftwing Jews who joined the senseless condemnation of President Trump for the “crime” of standing up for the American people and the Jewish people. Those ungrateful critics don’t represent me.
Fortunately, there are many Jews who are still rational and clear-thinking and appreciate all of the president’s achievements.
Calling the president “racist” is a distraction from the real issue of Omar and her colleagues’ hatefulness. It is time for everyone to demand that Speaker Pelosi should remove extreme, antisemitic, America-hating members from their committees.
Morton A Klein is President of the Zionist Organization of America(ZOA). A national Jewish weekly named him one of the most influential Jewish leaders in the country. The NY Jewish week named him one of the top ten Jewish leaders who make a difference. The Jewish Exponent named him one of the top dozen Jewish activists of the last century. Follow him on twitter @mortonaklein7 and at ZOA.org.
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