US Democrat Ilhan Omar repeatedly sparks controversy with her critical remarks about Israel. For this reason, they are now ousting the Republicans with their new majority in the House of Representatives from an important committee. Omar accuses MPs of racism.
The US Republicans have thrown the well-known Democratic MP Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives for comments critical of Israel. In a vote in the Congress Chamber on Thursday, 218 Republican MPs voted to exclude the left-wing politician from the powerful body. 211 Democrats voted against the exclusion.
Omar had accused the Republicans of racial motivations before the vote. "I'm a Muslim, I'm an immigrant and, interestingly, I'm from Africa," the 40-year-old said in the House of Representatives plenary session. "Is anyone surprised that I've been chosen as a target? Is anyone surprised that I'm somehow considered unworthy to speak about US foreign policy?"
The Muslim member of parliament, who comes from Somalia, has repeatedly come under criticism in recent years for statements about Israel, sometimes from within her own ranks. In 2019, for example, Omar suggested that US support for Israel was motivated by money. As a result, top Democrat politicians accused her of using an "anti-Semitic figurative expression".
In 2021, after a hearing with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Omar declared: "We have seen unimaginable atrocities committed by the US, Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan and the Taliban." This led to the accusation that Omar put Israel and the radical Islamic Hamas on the same level. The parliamentary group leadership of the Democrats criticized Omar for "false comparisons". The new speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy, accused Omar of "anti-Semitic" statements. Because of this, she cannot work on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chamber of Congress.
Democrats have sharply criticized Omar's ouster from the foreign affairs committee. They see the Republican action as retaliation for the removal of right-wing Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar from congressional committees last term, when Democrats controlled the House of Representatives. Democrats have accused Taylor Greene and Gosar of spreading incitement to violence and conspiracy theories.
In the midterm elections last November, the Republicans then won a narrow majority in the House of Representatives - and subsequently targeted Ilhan Omar. The MP came to the United States as a young refugee girl in the 1990s and was later naturalized there. She was elected to the US House of Representatives in 2018 as one of the first Muslim women in history. There she formed a group known as "The Squad" along with young left-wing MPs Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley.
Former President Donald Trump repeatedly attacked the group during his time in the White House. In 2019, he accused the four MPs of "hating" the United States and called on them to "go back" to their families' countries of origin - with the exception of Omar, the dark-skinned women were all born in the United States. The right-wing populist's statements were condemned as racist, and even then Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly reprimanded Trump.
