Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) criticized University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Chancellor Gene Block on Thursday for allowing pro-Israel counter-protesters to screen “vile” images of October 7 atrocities opposite a pro-Palestinian “encampment.”
Omar was questioning Block at a hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee to discuss antisemitism at UCLA and other campuses. He testified alongside college presidents from Northwestern and Rutgers.
As Breitbart News noted, the pro-Palestinian “encampment,” which was launched on April 25, took over a public area at UCLA, a public university. Activists used antisemitic rhetoric and barred Jewish students, as well as journalists, from entering.
The university, seeking to avoid confrontation, did not allow University of California police or campus security to intervene, effectively allowing the activists to form their own police force, setting up checkpoints on the campus.
Pro-Israel demonstrators from the surrounding communities, which are heavily Jewish, staged counter-protests. At one point, they set up a large screen showing footage from the Hamas terror attacks of October 7.
The screen, as Breitbart News noted, was partly funded by Jerry Seinfeld’s wife, Jessica. It was placed in a public area.
Omar, casting the pro-Palestinian students, and Palestinians, as the victims, complained about the “vile” footage, without acknowledging that the footage showed Palestinians committing atrocities — the “encampment’s” case.
Omar participated in an encampment at Columbia University. Her daughter, Isra, was banned from the campus.
Omar’s own anti-Israel and antisemitic views are a matter of public record, both before and during her time in office.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.