
Senate Republicans are set to introduce two bills that oppose anti-Semitism, JTA reported on Monday.
The bills follow the controversy surrounding Rep. Ilhan Omar, the freshman Muslim Democrat from Minnesota, who has caused an uproar over anti-Semitic remarks she made about Israel and its supporters.
Omar came under fire after she suggested on Twitter that Republicans were attacking her at the behest of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. She subsequently issued a half-hearted apology before ultimately deleting the controversial tweets.
Omar later caused another uproar when, at a public event, she appeared to refer to domestic support for Israel as “allegiance to a foreign country”.
One of the bills to be proposed by the Republicans is a resolution declaring that “anti-Semitism has for hundreds of years included attacks on the loyalty of Jews.”
The resolution is meant as a criticism of Omar. It is expected to be introduced Tuesday by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
The second, called the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, is a bipartisan bill first introduced in 2016 to use resources in the Education Department’s Civil Rights Division to combat anti-Semitism on college campuses.