According to an Israeli policy expert, Ilhan Omar’s support for the anti-Israel BDS movement means she wants to boycott a company that employs thousands of voters in her own district.
By Ezra Stone, United with Israel
The anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement says it seeks to economically and culturally harm the Jewish state, but even its founder, radical pro-terror activist Omar Barghouti, admits its ultimate goal is to destroy Israel as it currently exists.
Among BDS’ most high-profile supporters in the U.S. is Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who told a huge crowd at a Minneapolis synagogue during her campaign in 2018 that BDS is “not helpful,” only to admit to a Muslim website following her victory that she fully supports the anti-Israel movement.
BDS and its accomplices, including members of the United Nations and its agencies, demand a boycott of companies and institutions with connections to Israel, and specifically those that do business in Judea and Samaria, where about half a million Jewish Israelis live.
One of the companies BDS targets is General Mills, which appeared on an anti-Israel boycott blacklist published by the United Nations in 2020.
As Israeli political analyst Asher Fredman recently pointed out on Twitter, Minnesota-based General Mills maintains several key facilities right in Ilhan Omar’s own district.
According to Fredman, General Mills employs thousands of Omar’s own voters, which means she is promoting a movement that not only singles out the Jewish state, but also could economically harm the very voters she was sent to Washington to represent.
This sad reality is a microcosm of a movement that is so obsessed with destroying Israel, it doesn’t care how much harm it does to the Arabs it claims to help.
BDS’ record of cutting off its nose to spite its face is shocking and tragic.
For example, an Israeli company SodaStream, which employs a huge, diverse workforce of Jews and Arabs, was pressured into moving one of its factories.
BDS claimed this as a major victory, despite the fact that it cost the livelihoods of hundreds of Arabs for whom the anti-Israel movement says it advocates.
“SodaStream is still a major target of the BDS movement due to … [its] complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Naqab (Negev) in the south of Israel,” claimed BDS.
In reality, SodaStream represents a beacon of coexistence and economic opportunity for Arabs and Jews alike.
“Everyone works together: Palestinians, Russians, Jews,” a Palestinian employee named Rasim commented to JTA in 2013. “Everyone works together, so of course we’re friends.”
Anti-Semitism Accusations That Won’t Go Away
Fredman connected the dots about BDS, Omar, and General Mills just days after she became embroiled in yet another anti-Semitism scandal.
Omar called out specific donations that her opponent Antone Melton-Meaux received and added the names of Jewish donors, claiming voters can’t trust Melton-Meaux because he is “in the pocket” of his donors and voters should question whose money controls his campaign.
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) condemned her remarks, calling them “reprehensible” and blasting her for “continuing to traffic in anti-Semitic tropes” and “seeking to fan the flames of anti-Semitism among her constituents.”
“Omar continues to target Jews, despite repeated attempts … to educate her on the consternation caused by her racist comments,” said the AJC. “This cannot be tolerated.”
This episode follows Omar’s “all about the Benjamins” claim, accusing pro-Israel lobby AIPAC of paying elected officials to support the Jewish state, which she famously accused of “hypnotiz[ing] the world” and perpetrating “evil doings” in 2012.