The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives yesterday expelled the Democratic and Muslim deputy Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee of the body.
The measure, answered with shouts from Omar’s colleagues and with a speech on the verge of tears, was justified by alleged anti-Semitic statements by the representative, who, for example, in 2019 wrote a tweet to suggest that Israel’s US allies were only moved the money: “It’s all about baby Benjamin,” he said, referring to the portrait of Benjamin Franklin on the $100 bills. The head of the House, Kevin McCarthy, said in explaining the expulsion that this had been one of Omar’s “repeated anti-Semitic and anti-American comments”, always critical of Israel’s policies.
The leader of the Democratic minority in the House, objected that although Omar has made mistakes, his exclusion was a revenge of the Republicans for which in 2021 he removed ultras Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar from their committees for their incitement to the violence and defense of the assault on the Capitol.
Ilhan Omar, born in Somalia in 1982 and emigrated to the US in 1995 with her family as an asylum seeker, said that they will never make her stop fighting “for a fairer world” and especially for refugees.
Next to a photo of him from when he arrived in the country, Omar wondered: “Who can be an American? What opinions do you have to have to be considered American? That’s what it’s all about. There is this idea that you are suspicious if you are an immigrant,” he said. And he denounced the death threats he has received: Threats that “increase every time the Republicans put a target on my back,” he also wrote on Twitter.
