An omen of Omar

When Ilhan Omar became the biggest story in the United States for a few days earlier this month, I mostly gave the subject a rest. She is an incredibly duplicitous and tiresome piece of work. I want to return to her briefly this morning.

Omar’s Islamist anti-Semitism raised an uproar that she has treated in part as an issue of public relations. It reminds me of her treatment of the issues surrounding her marriage to husband number 2 when we publicized them back in August 2016. The Omar campaign flew in a Democratic public relations consultant to issue a few statements and pronounce the matter closed.

I called out Omar’s Islamist anti-Semitism last year once the DFL endorsed her in the special Fifth District DFL endorsing convention held on June 17, 2018. See, e.g., my City Journal column “A question for Democrats.” The local media left the issue buried and, Omar therefore didn’t have to deal with it directly.

Now that Omar is playing on a national stage she faces a slightly greater challenge. She has adopted a public relations approach that focuses on Israel and promotes some version of a “two-state solution.” This week the Washington Post published her column republished in the Star Tribune as “Apply universal values to all nations to achieve peace.”

In the column she opines: “We must acknowledge that this is also the historical homeland of Palestinians. And without a state, the Palestinian people live in a state of permanent refugeehood and displacement. This, too, is a refugee crisis, and they, too, deserve freedom and dignity.” Some translation is required, to be supplied at a later date. The press has yet to ask Omar about Hamas’s war to extinguish Israel or the Palestinian Authority’s continuing incitement and support of terrorism against Israeli civilians.

Omar’s support of BDS gives the game away for sentient beings. It was a subject of intense interest at the DFL candidates’ August 6 forum at Beth El Synagogue the week before the primary. The sanctuary was packed with a largely Jewish audience. I saw many friends and acquaintances in attendance that night. Star Tribune reporter Maya Rao covered the event, but she somehow missed this issue.

In the video below, Omar responded to moderator Mary Lahammer’s question on anti-Semitism. What would Omar do about it? Omar spoke of joining the Jewish community in “alliedship” in fighting against “Islamophobia.”

Lahammer followed up with a question regarding Israel and the anti-Israel divestment movement (“BDS,” referred to by Lahammer as “BSD”). During the campaign Omar suspended her support of BDS for one night only, before this audience.

Since her election, Omar has renounced this position. She supports BDS, just as she did until the evening of August 6. Omar’s behavior says something about her contempt for the crowd before her that night. The video below is cued to pick up the Israel/BDS component of the question/response. As I say, it was of intense interest to the audience at Beth El Synagogue.

There is much more that could be said — consider Omar’s love affair with the fake civil rights organization/Hamas sibling CAIR — and I will probably get around to saying it. This morning I would like to leave it here.

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