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Rabbi Hayim Herring demanded that Ilhan Omar “think before she tweets antisemitic and bigoted comments” after the lawmaker accused Israel of killing an Al Jazeera reporter.
By United with Israel staff
Accusations of antisemitism have been a feature of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s career since at least 2012, when she accused Israel of “evil doings” and said that the Jewish state had “hypnotized the world.”
Omar is in hot water again after a recent dubious tweet about the death of an Al Jazeera journalist named Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed during a gunfight between Palestinian terrorists and Israeli security forces in Jenin.
Without proof, Omar tweeted that Abu Akleh was “killed by the Israeli military,” an incendiary accusation that resulted in widespread condemnation.
One of the individuals who refused to ignore such an egregious tweet is one of Omar’s constituents, Rabbi Hayim Herring.
The author and former congregational leader delivered a letter to Omar flagging specific errors that he warned amount to “a version of the dangerous anti-Jewish ‘blood-libel’ trope.”
Herring also started a Change.org petition demanding that Omar “think before she tweets antisemitic and bigoted comments.”
“I have been frustrated, like many other Jewish constituents, with her anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, and anti-other minority comments,” said Herring, according to a report by a Twin Cities area Jewish community website called TC Jewfolk. “I think that you can’t just tweet and get away with things. I decided I can’t sit idly by.”
‘Trifecta of Lies’
Herring continued, “So if we break it apart, what she’s saying is, members of the Israeli establishment planned a premeditated murder. About the $3.8 billion in military aid with no restrictions: if you’re on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and you don’t know that most of that has to be reinvested here, then you don’t deserve to be on the Foreign Affairs Committee.
“And here we go with human rights violations. Well, let’s talk about the fact that Israeli human rights were being violated by terrorists. So it was that trifecta of lies,” Herring added.
Herring highlighted the fact that Omar accused Israel of killing the journalist before “a verifiable forensic or international investigation was completed” into Abu-Akleh’s death.
Omar tweeted the comments after CNN and AP published reports spreading accusations that Israel targeted journalists. As a result, CNN’s journalistic ethics and standards have been questioned by several media watchdogs. CNN relied almost entirely on biased so-called “witnesses,” several of whom supported the murder of innocent Israelis in coldblooded terror attacks.
CNN’s star forensics expert, Chris Cobb-Smith, was also exposed as an advisor to the London-based Forensic Architecture, which HonestReporting noted has “produced numerous pseudo-scientific investigations into Israel that have reached provenly biased and misleading conclusions.”
Omar’s Jewish Problem
Omar has a history of making problematic statements about the Jewish state. In February 2019, Ilhan tweeted “it’s all about the Benjamins baby” with regard to pro-Israel support in Congress, using a reference to the $100 bill featuring Benjamin Franklin to allude to bribery.
In an interview in January 2019 with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, the congresswoman, an active supporter of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, defended her 2012 tweet in which she said that “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”
Omar also blamed Israel for a round of airstrikes in which Hamas and Islamic Jihad shot some 700 rockets into the Jewish state, killing four and wounding dozens.
At the time, Imam Mohamad Tawhidi, an Iranian-Australian Muslim religious leader and an outspoken critic of radical Islam, accused Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib of being antisemitic Islamists.
They bring a “dangerous” extremist agenda to Congress, he stated.
Among Omar’s defenders is Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a notorious antisemite who referred to Jews as “termites” and praised Omar’s statements against Jews and Israel.
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