Ilhan Omar
Ilhan OmarReuters

The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) welcomed the ousting of Congressman Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments.

“No one believed for one minute her disingenuous claim following the deployment of a classic anti-Semitic trope,” said Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, Founder and CEO and Associate Dean and Global Social Action Director.

“Representative Omar should have been held accountable immediately by the House when she made those statements,” they added.

“Moving forward, if Congresswoman Omar wants to repair her relationship with the Jewish community, she should own up to what was said in the past, apologize and move on,” Hier and Cooper concluded.

The vote took place along party lines after a tense floor debate, with 218 Republicans voting to remove her from the committee and 211 Democrats voting against the measure. One Republican, David Joyce (R-OH), voted present, the New York Post reported.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy sought to block Omar from the committee due to her criticisms of Israel and its government and past statements that contained antisemitic tropes.

Omar came under fire in 2019 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.

In another incident, Omar shared to Twitter a video of a conversation she had with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in which she appeared to compare Israel and the United States to Hamas and the Taliban.

After 12 of the 25 Jewish Democrats in the US House of Representatives published a statement criticizing Omar’s assertion, she fired back at her Jewish colleagues and said, “It’s shameful for colleagues who call me when they need my support to now put out a statement asking for ‘clarification’ and not just call.”

She later issued another clarification and claimed she had been misunderstood.

Asked earlier this week about her past antisemitic statements, Omar told CNN that she was not aware that her comments could be viewed as antisemitic.

She accused Republicans of Islamophobia, claiming, "It is politically motivated, and in some cases motivated by the fact that many of these members don't believe a Muslim refugee, an African, should even be in Congress, let alone have the opportunity to serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee."

House Republicans listed six past statements Omar made while in office that “under the totality of the circumstances, disqualify her from serving on the Committee of Foreign Affairs,” Rep. Michael Guest (R-MS) said.

“All members, both Republicans and Democrats alike who seek to serve on Foreign Affairs, should be held to the highest standard of conduct due to the international sensitivity and national security concerns under the jurisdiction of this committee.”