CNN’s John Berman interviewed Minnesota Representative-elect Ilhan Omar Tuesday, touching on a number of topics, but not once asking about her past anti-Israel rhetoric.
Ilhan Omar was lobbed softball questions by CNN’s Berman about a possible government shutdown, impeaching President Trump, and going to a Carrie Underwood concert with Mike Pence (seriously).
However, Berman managed to avoid asking Omar about a tweet she sent in 2012 that many saw as anti-Semitic.
“Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. Gaza Palestine Israel,” she said.
When Omar was confronted about the tweets by a social media user this spring, she responded angrily, and doubled down, calling Israel an apartheid state.
“Drawing attention to the apartheid Israeli regime is far from hating Jews. You are a hateful sad man, I pray to Allah you get the help you need and find happiness,” she said.
CNN has a curious past with left-wing anti-Semites. Until recently, the network employed Marc Lamont Hill as a contributor, despite his past association with the racist and anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
Farrakhan has a long history of inflammatory anti-Semitic statements, and praised Adolf Hitler in a speech in the 80s, saying, “The Jews don’t like Farrakhan, so they call me Hitler. Well, that’s a good name. Hitler was a very great man.”
Hill later condemned Farrakhan after a photo of the two emerged. He was then let go from the network in November after he made several anti-Israel comments at the United Nations, effectively calling for the destruction of the current Jewish state.
He also defended violence committed by Palestinians, saying, “We must prioritize peace. But we must not romanticize or fetishize it. We must advocate and promote nonviolence at every opportunity, but we cannot endorse a narrow politics of respectability that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing in the fact of state violence and ethnic cleansing.”
Following the uproar over his comments, CNN released a one-sentence statement reading, “Marc Lamont Hill is no longer under contract with CNN.” The network did not condemn or even mention anything he said about Israel.
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