More than 200 rabbis sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ridiculing her for not more strongly condemning Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar and accusing the Minnesota Democrat of inciting attacks on American Jews.
“We reiterate that the mob attacks on American Jews today are directly attributable to the rhetoric of Rep. Omar and those who stand with her within and beyond Congress,” the rabbis wrote in the letter Wednesday, which was organized by the Coalition of Jewish Values and its president, Rabbi Pesach Lerner.
The coalition said Pelosi’s response to the controversial comments was “far too mild” and argued a more acceptable response would be for Omar to be removed from her position on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
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“To protect Jewish Americans and, moreover, safeguard the integrity of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, we thus insist upon the removal of Rep. Omar from her appointment,” they wrote.
The group began the letter by praising Pelosi for her condemnation of Hamas’s recent rocket attack on Israel and her “affirmation of Israel’s right to defend itself.”
The group said, however, that her “failure to act” in response to Omar “would allow antisemitism to not only fester in Congress but also inflame it in cities across America.”
“Rep. Omar’s unfounded assertion that Israel committed ‘unthinkable atrocities’ by defending lives against an openly genocidal terror organization is not merely offensive, it is pernicious – for it is grounded in the blood libel and the calumny that Jews poisoned wells during the Black Death,” they continued. “Without anything resembling a forceful response from the Democratic Party, tolerance of anti-Jewish hatred has proliferated.”
The rabbis also recognized comments from a dozen of Omar’s Jewish Democratic colleagues, who were critical of Omar and her remarks.
“When 12 Jewish Democrats in the House rightfully denounced Rep. Omar’s abhorrent bigotry, the Congressional Progressive Caucus stooped to playing identity politics, cravenly claiming that the motivation for the condemnation was opposition to Rep. Omar as a ‘Black, Muslim woman’ rather than her anti-Semitic animus,” they wrote.
While the letter calls for Omar to face additional consequences for her words, Pelosi said Friday that Democratic leadership would not be taking any further action after Omar clarified a controversial tweet that appeared to liken the United States, Israel, Hamas, and the Taliban.
Omar followed up her tweet in a statement in which she said she did not intend to draw a “moral comparison between Hamas and the Taliban and the U.S. and Israel.”
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“I think that she clarified her remarks, and we accept that, and she has a point that she wanted to make, and she has a right to make that point,” Pelosi told a group of reporters on Friday. “There’s some unease about how it was interpreted.”
“She made her clarification,” Pelosi added before taking another question.
