Nancy Pelosi Appoints Anti-Israel Radical Ilhan Omar to House Foreign Affairs Committee

Ilhan Omar Nancy Pelosi (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appointed anti-Israel radical Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday.

Omar confirmed the appointment on Twitter on Thursday afternoon.

Omar supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, which has been called antisemitic because it singles out the Jewish state for isolation and ignores the Palestinian side.

(She pretended not to support BDS until after she had been elected to Congress.)

Omar has also referred to Israel as an “apartheid regime,”

In 2012, Omar posted a tweet — which remains live — claiming that Israel had “hypnotized” the world, and calling it “evil.”

Asked Wednesday evening by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour why she had tweeted that, Omar said “those unfortunate words were the only words I could think about expressing at that moment.”

Nevertheless, Omar won a coveted seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee — which, she said on Thursday, had been her first choice of committee assignment.

Republicans blasted Pelosi’s decision, reminding her that she and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had both firmly opposed BDS in the past.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) issued a statement in which he reminded Pelosi that she said Congress “must” oppose BDS, and that Schumer had called BDS “anti-Semitism.”

“I would love to know what changed, because Democratic leaders just promoted a pro-BDS Democrat to a key committee that deals with the State of Israel.”

McCarthy continued: “Anti-Semitism has no place in Congress and certainly not on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.”

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) blasted Pelosi for appointing Omar to the committee, saying she had a “documented history of making anti-Semitic and anti-Israel remarks.”

He added: “House Democrats have now just endorsed that ideology.”

New conference chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) called Pelosi’s decision “shameful” and urged her to rescind the appointment.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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