OAN Roy Francis
UPDATED 11:18 AM PT – Thursday, February 2, 2023
The House of Representatives has voted to remove Representative Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Omar (D-Minn.) was voted out of the committee by a vote of 218-211 following a speech she gave saying “her leadership and voice will be diminished.”
House Republicans argued that she should not be on the committee due to her past statements that she made related to Israel, some of which had been criticized by both parties as antisemitic.
This comes after Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy denied Representatives Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) seats on the House Intelligence Committee as well.
McCarthy had stated that Swalwell was denied due to a report that he had received about him from the FBI, meanwhile he said that Schiff had “openly lied to the American public.”
Democrats accused Republicans of racism and hypocrisy before the vote had taken place, claiming that they are policing Democrats for “questionable behavior.”
“I am Muslim, I am an immigration, and interestingly, from Africa,” Omar said. “Is anyone surprised that I am being targeted? Is anyone surprised that I am somehow deemed unworthy to speak about American foreign policy, or that they see me as a powerful voice that needs to be silenced.”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) had accused the GOP of racism and inciting violence again.
“Consistency? There is nothing consistent with the Republican Party’s continued attack, except for the racism and incitement of violence against women of color in this body,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “This is about targeting women of color in the United States of America.”
GOP members said that they are only following the “roadmap previously approved” by the previous Democrat-controlled congress. They had used this outline to remove a Republican member from all House committees.
Representative Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) said that she has seen Omar’s anti-Semitism along with Anti-Americanism.
“As a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I’ve sat there and heard the representative actually spew anti-American rhetoric as well,” she said. “I’ve been in that committee room where the representative equates Israel and the United States to Hamas and the Taliban. Absolutely unacceptable for a member of that committee.”
In 2019, Omar had said that Jewish people were buying U.S. political support by saying “it’s all about the Benjamins, baby,” which struck many on both sides of the aisle as highly anti-Semitic.
She had also went on to accuse Jewish Americans of having an “allegiance to a foreign country,” in regards to Israel, which was met with severe backlash.
A month later she had downplayed the 9/11 attacks that nearly killed 3,000 people by describing them as “some people did something.”
In 2021, Omar had also called Israel an “apartheid state,” and she had compared the U.S. and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban by saying they had hall committed “unthinkable atrocities.”
The resolution that was used to remove the Democrat from the committee states that members of the Foreign Affairs Committee are held to an “equal standard of conduct due to the international sensitivities and national security concerns under the jurisdiction of this committee,” and that “Representative Omar, by her own words, has disqualified herself from serving on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, a panel that is viewed by nations around the world as speaking for Congress on matters of international importance and national security.”
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