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London Mayor Sadiq Khan hailed visiting U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, despite her documented record of antisemitic rhetoric.
By United with Israel Staff
Since entering public life, American lawmaker Ilhan Omar has alienated the Jewish community with her anti-Israel agenda. Her rhetoric has led to persistent accusations of antisemitism since she tweeted a decade ago that the Jewish state “hypnotized the world” with its “evil doings.”
Shockingly, London Mayor Sadiq Khan welcomed her with open arms in the U.K. last week, commenting, “From the lakes of Minnesota to the bright lights of London, we must stand firm in upholding progressive values of equality and inclusion in the face of those who seek to divide us.”
Omar’s record on the Jewish state and Jews in American reflect anything but the values of “equality and inclusion,” marked instead by a troubling double standard and obsession with singling out Israel for scorn.
Throughout the years, Omar has promoted a variety of antisemitic tropes, including the aforementioned tweet claiming, “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”
In 2018, she claimed that U.S. support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins,” alluding to the image of Benjamin Franklin on $100 bills. She has also insinuated that her Jewish Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill have dual loyalties and falsely accused Israel of intentionally killing a journalist.
Based on her record, Omar earned the “Antisemite of the Year” award in 2019 from the StopAntisemism.org NGO.
“The NGO announced that Omar would be awarded the title of biggest antisemite of the year…including a video listing her achievements in the field of Jew-hatred, accompanied sarcastically by congratulatory music and confetti,” reported the Jerusalem Post at the time.
Despite her troubling record, Khan gave Omar a hero’s welcome in London last week.
While in the U.K., Omar also met with a number of other politicians who have faced antisemitism scandals. These include Labour MP Naz Shah, whose discourse has breached the International Definition of Antisemitism on at least four occasions, according to the Campaign Against Antisemitism. Shah was eventually suspended from the Labour Party.
In June 2022, Shah reportedly spoke at an event at which calls were made to “lift the curse of the Jews off the Muslims in Palestine!”
Among others, Omar met with Baroness Sayeeda Warsi as well, who claimed that British Jews who volunteer for the IDF should be prosecuted in a similar manner to those who fight for the ISIS terror group.
Trouble in Her Own Back Yard
At the beginning of July, Omar was loudly booed at an annual Somali Independence Day event in Minnesota, which is home to around 50,000 people of Somali descent.
Loud boos could be heard emanating from the crowd as Omar, who is Somali-American, took the stage with her third husband, Tim Mynett, in tow.
According to Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Rubin, Somalis are “frustrated” that Omar, “the first Somali-American and one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress,” has “not used her seat to advance U.S.-Somali ties.”
“Instead, Omar has made the Palestinian issue a cornerstone of her congressional activism, apparently at the urging both of Basim Sabri — her second largest donor and a Palestinian-American real estate tycoon from Minneapolis who donated maximum amounts to Omar’s congressional campaign — as well as his daughter Karmel, a fundraiser for causes in the Gaza Strip,” added Rubin. “No group or charity can operate in Gaza, however, without cooperating with Hamas, which has ruled the Palestinian territory with an iron fist since 2006.”
Rubin notes that Sabri is a “polarizing figure” and a “convicted felon” whom Somalis see as a “slum lord” who “exploits the Somali community.”
In addition to the longstanding antisemitism scandal that has dogged Omar throughout her career as a congresswoman, Omar was also accused of immigration fraud connected to her ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, whom her detractors claim is actually her biological brother. An investigation by an independent Minnesota-based organization claims it has DNA proof that Omar and Elmi are siblings and that their marriage was a sham, entered into for the purposes of committing immigration fraud.
More recently, Omar was accused of having an extra-marital affair with Mynett, details of which emerged during his divorce proceedings. During an interview on local television, Omar was asked whether she was separated from her second husband or dating anyone. “No, I am not,” she claimed.
She eventually married Mynett, the owner of a political consulting firm to which Omar has overseen $2.8 million in payments, according to a Fox News report.
“Omar’s campaign paid $1.6 million to E Street Group LLC, which Mynett owns, from 2019 to July 22, 2020,” Fox News reported, citing Federal Election Commission data. Omar married Mynett in October 2020.
“Another $1.1 million was sent to the firm in the third quarter and $27,000 in the following weeks. The $1.1 million figure represented nearly 70 percent of the $1.6 million that her campaign spent in those three months, the report said. The expenses were for a range of campaign services, including cable advertising, ‘digital consulting,’ video production and editing,” reported the New York Post based on Fox’s investigation.
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